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Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

kite.com

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Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#511

Post by eikenberry »

dazzawazza wrote: post #420
eikenberry wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Non-free software is always paying for a service. If you don't get the source (and the ability to use it) you don't get the software. The source code is the software... the binary is an merely way to access a small part of it.

I don't care about software licenses. I'm a contractor. I pay for software that makes me better at my job AND I trust the vendor will support ME. My time is valuable to me and my clients.

Never said you should or shouldn't use those services, just that you are paying for a service and not buying software.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#512

Post by acchow »

happymellon wrote: post #318
acchow wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange. In my experience, IntelliJ from 2012 is a superior experience to VSCode today.

I use both, and it really depends on the language. Something like Java is really benefitted from IntelliJ, Spring integration is excellent, but especially scripting languages like Python or JavaScript/Typescript don't get enough uplift and you might as well use VS Code.

I mean for Java. IntelliJ is made for Java. If you want to do Python, Jetbrains (the creator of IntelliJ) made PyCharm. For Javascript, they made Webstorm.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#513

Post by RupertEisenhart »

kmeisthax wrote: post #502
RupertEisenhart wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind explaining why? What do you think will happen? This is a serious question, I'm apparently just unaware of the horror-stories that can come out of breaking copyright. (Not from the US so..) For me its most useful for helping with bash scripts and small simple stuff, just saves a huge amount of time I would spend googling and checking small things. Not sure if copyright is relevant there or not, it certainl…

ML text and image generators have a habit of regurgitating training data, especially if you happen to use certain inputs or prompts that also match said data even superficially. For example, type in "fast inverse square root"[0] and get out a bunch of Quake source code. If you use code or art generated by an AI that was regurgitating training data, you can be sued for copyright infringement. The way that AI gets trai…

So, this makes sense from the perspective of writing code professionally for a company. I don't buy that the risk is significant for an individual programmer, but I suppose it is plausible that lawsuits could pose a threat to a large organization.

But I find I get most pleasure out of using CoPilot for personal tasks, everyday stuff that isn't for work. Surely there is no issue there?

And to counter the note about the scraping sources-- I have recently (out of work) been experimenting with using CoPilot to translate open-source MATLAB code into python and zig. If I make something useful in this way, it will be open source and I will credit those who wrote the original code.

Surely a use-case like that last would have to tick all the moral and legal boxes?

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#514

Post by OkayPhysicist »

jnwatson wrote: post #144
dijit wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'll allow me to go on a tangent here; The sheer volume of subscription services I've signed up for as the CTO for a startup is mind-boggling. $8 here, $19 there, $49 for something important, $99 for something essential. Some tools are easily worth it, especially when you see what is charged for other (less valuable) tools. Gitlab, Confluence, Jira, Asana, 1Password, co-pilot, codepen, sentry, jetbrains, gitlab…

The weird thing is that 13% seems high. It is hard to imagine they are less than 13% more efficient with those tools. It is weird that software engineers are the only engineer-types that are supposed to be able to do their job with just a computer and a built-in editor.

Software development is the only field I can think of where the making of the tools of the trade is wholly encapsulated by the field itself. Maybe blacksmithing. In such an environment, it makes sense. We make our own tools, and for the most part the most powerful of those tools end up being given away for free. To other people who both use the tools, and have the capacity to improve them. Who then give them away for free.

It is not a coincidence that software development tooling is one of the only fields that has has been thoroughly eaten by open source. It's because the user-developer circle is complete. A mechanical engineer probably doesn't have the skillset to improve the CAD program they're running. A software developer probably has the skillset to improve VIM.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#515

Post by geoelectric »

skrtskrt wrote: post #508
mrguyorama wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, even though it's "expensive" for an individual user, you own a full version forever!!! That makes the several hundred dollar price tag much less of an issue.

And the price goes down every year you renew for like four years I think? By year 4 you’re getting the all products pack for like $150/ year

Yeah, I jumped in when they first did subs back in 2015 (IIRC). Nowadays, the charge seems pretty trivial for what you get, though I think they may have just raised it on me a little to closer to $175.

I also jumped into a personal O'Reilly Safari subscription way back when the price wasn't as high as it is now, and I've kept that grandfathered subscription up as well.

I think between the two, it ends up being a bit less than $500 a year. That's not very much at all against a tech salary, and the O'Reilly sub actually has been quietly useful for work projects now and again too.

My basic take is 1) A builder should have their own set of tools whether they hew wood or numbers (and not everything fits neatly into Visual Studio Code, though I probably use that as much or more than Jetbrains); and 2) if I ever do manage to squeeze out a profitable side project in CA, I want my argument that I'm not using my employer's resources in any way shape or form to be very very solid.

In CA, who owns the resources is the difference in who owns that product. For the same reason, I always buy my own cell phone and pay my own cell phone plan, even if a corporate phone is otherwise forced on me, and always own my own laptop as well for any personal development that comes up.

It's a touch on the paranoid side, I guess, but I just feel better knowing I can be as independent as I want to be with my tech stack. With my own tech library to lean on, a nearly universal set of build tools licensed specifically to me, and my own devices for communication and development, I feel very comfortable that there's no implied shared resource argument that can be made.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#516

Post by sroussey »

LASR wrote: post #235

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. I know this first hand, building a developer tool startup and failing to reach any level of revenue. In the end, the tech was bought out by a larger company to recover a fraction of our VC investment. The challenge is that when you're building software for developers, they already know how it must work. It's like trying to sell magic tricks to magici…

Developers will pay for things that don’t like to do that are outside their comfort zone and they don’t have the time or inclination.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#517

Post by culi »

jareds wrote: post #494
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kotlin is such a lovely language, and I really like that it was made by JetBrains because that means I can count on a top notch IDE/development experience.

The fact that Kotlin was created by JetBrains and appears to require their IDE to be productive is the reason I have no interest in it. I'm totally blind and while JetBrains IDE's are technically accessible with my screen reading software they are difficult to use unlike VSCode which makes an effort to be plesent to use with screen reader software not just technically possible to use.

I've always used VSCode and I really don't see what it is that JetBrains can do that VSC can't. Any time there's a new language I'm picking up I can almost always count on a good extension to provide all the necessary intellisense I need.

Good to hear they've done a better job with their screen reader accessibility as well. I learned to use VoiceOver a month ago (I do a lot of front-end dev work) and ever since then I've had a lot of appreciation for any app/site that manages to pull do it well

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#518

Post by culi »

BMorearty wrote: post #510
bombolo wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire topic of the discussion was engineers buying their own work tools. You went OT. It happens. No reason to be snarky about it.

Disagree. The comment I replied to was about personally paying for tools. My read was that they meant for personal use. And you started the snark, not me.

regardless I think a point was missed that you might end up pushing up code produced by copilot that could get your company in legal trouble

While I think this concern has a lot of merit, I use Copilot a lot almost always just as a fancy autocomplete. I wouldn't ever let it produce a completely new piece of code for me and I imagine most other devs using it have the same practices so this critique never really hit

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#519

Post by culi »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #326
petesergeant wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.

For TypeScript there's little difference since most of TypeScript support comes from the same language server running in the background (there's an option in the menus to restart it if it breaks, same as in vscode). Although autocomplete is better (especially for pure JS), it doesn't warrant paying for a license IMHO. Personally, I use IDEA for TS because I use it for other languages where it blows everything else ou…

I feel like most of these can be accomplished in VSCode with an extension... We use GraphQL at my work and the amount of coworkers I've run into that don't have the GQL extension installed kinda surprises me. It makes a huge difference so part of me wonders if the criticisms of VSC not being "full-blown" enough is just people not being aware of available/relevant extensions (also probably why VSCode now randomly suggests possibly relevant extensions now)

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#520

Post by marssaxman »

chasing wrote: post #199

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. I’m an individual developer and I pay for tools all the time . They just have to be of value to me. If developers weren’t paying for your tool, maybe look within.

What kinds of tools are you willing to pay for?

I can't think of any dev tools I've paid for in this century; it seems better to rely on open source infrastructure.

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