14 ms·

Kite – Programming Copilot

1138 points by wodow 11y ago

andretti1977 11y ago
Well, definitely this is a great project but at the moment, for what i was able to see in the demo video, the main features are very similar to code completion and API exploring as i can currently perform with my ide (i develop mainly java based app so IntellijIdea or Eclipse give me quite the same help). Don't want to be rude but it doesn't seem like this tool may currently enhance my productivity.
- not_kurt_godel 11y ago
  Definitely agree with you. Clearly, this is a tool that has the potential to make Python programming easier by adding functionality similar to what you can inherently get out of the box with a statically typed language + a good IDE. On the other hand, it also underscores Python's deficiencies as a language. I used to love Python, and still do, but I would never use it for a large project of any substantial complexity since I've seen how tremendously useful static typing is both for writing code and, arguably more importantly, reading and analyzing existing code. A couple of huge advantages are very robust auto-completion, the ability to quickly and immediately jump to the source code of a given type, and finding references to a given type across the codebase without ambiguity. Kite gets you part of the way, but the nature of Python means it'll never beat Java in these aspects.
- alexflint 11y ago
  The main difference versus IDEs is that everything we show is informed by all the public code we've collected from the web. So e.g. there are a ton of arguments to matplotlib.plot and IDEs can show you them all ranked alphabetically, whereas we can show you common patterns of how people actually use matplotlib.plot in practice, which is often far more useful. (We'll show you the docs, too.) Another example is if you type "load('abc.json')" without having imported json: there are hundreds of python packages that define a function called "load", but "json" and "simplejson" are by _far_ the most widely used, so we can suggest that you "from json import load". That's something you can't do unless you have a good model of a lot of real-world code.
  - nhaliday 10y ago
    Any comments on how your product and plans compare to https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/? They seem to have a similar offering with an on-premise version, though lacking the smooth editor integration.
adamsmith 11y ago
Hi everyone, we couldn't be more excited to tell you about Kite and get your feedback! We think connecting programming environments to a smart backend will improve programming in a lot of ways, and this is just the first step. We'd love to hear your thoughts on where we should go from here!
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  This looks great! Loved the left-pad joke in there. Could you elaborate on when it'll be available? Will you make it or parts open source?
  - adamcanady 11y ago
    Also the hostname of "TayandYou".
    - jdiez17 11y ago
      And the icons on the desktop.
    - saltycraig 11y ago
      And the rm -rf / joke ;)
    - ipince 11y ago
      And the Batman v Superman. lol
  - adamsmith 11y ago
    We will begin inviting folks today. We want to control the upramp for two reasons: first, with desktop software, every time you take a step up in user base order-of-magnitude (1 -> 10 -> 100 ...) you see new bugs from odd desktop configurations. For example, we've already had one user whose machine wouldn't resolve "localhost" when docker was running : ) Second, we have to also manage backend scaling. We have some pretty strong systems engineers, but maybe because they're experienced they know what they don't know! But we want everyone to be using it ASAP also. RE open source, today we open sourced our client plugins (http://github.com/kiteco/plugins http://github.com/kiteco/plugins), and published instructions for writing your own. If you use an editor that isn't supported, it's about a 2-3 day project to create a plugin for a new editor. : )
fizzbatter 11y ago
This looks really cool. Bothers me having my code sent over, because i can't use it for a variety of use cases, but for my personal work i may give it a try. I've got two main desires though: 1. In editor pane. I use Vim in a full screen term, and really want want to deal with managing OS windows to allow a Kite window side by side with iTerm2. Perhaps an overlay would be solve this? That way it works for bash/etc? 2. Rust support. I'm learning rust lately, and this sort of tool could really benefit me with a learner-error-prone language like Rust. Based on the signup form though, Rust does not appear available.
- alexflint 11y ago
  1. Yeah, I agree. It's hard, and it's something we continue to iterate on. How would you feel about a global keyboard shortcut that would show/hide the overlay that was a separate application? 2. I love Rust. We will get to it even though it's (sadly) not at the top of our list right now.
lincolnq 11y ago
Wow, this looks pretty amazing - well done with the demo. I'm super excited to try it out, how soon will it be ready?
- adamsmith 11y ago
  We have some folks outside of the company using Kite already, and will be scaling that up as quickly as we can!
_ZeD_ 11y ago
I was exited until: What platforms does Kite run on? For now, Kite only works on OS X, but we'll support Linux and Windows soon, too. bummer :(
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  It's good to polish it first for one OS. Honestly, I would have been disappointed with them if it were otherwise.
- adamsmith 11y ago
  I started slinging code in Visual Basic 5 back in the day, and ran Windows until recently. I hope to be able to jump into building the Windows client soon : ) Fortunately all of our UI is html and javascript, so no windows controls needed : )
  - zuck9 11y ago
    Electron?
  - Vekz 11y ago
    +1 for Electron sounds like you have a knowledge gap and are missing an easy cross platform opportunity.
Dangeranger 11y ago
Do you support code linting or code smells in addition to completions?
martinni 11y ago
Looks great! The only thing is I don't like the thought of having to share my screen real estate. Would it be possible to have some kind of navigable popup box within the editor?
- alexflint 11y ago
  Yeah this is something we're still iterating on. Though it wasn't in the demo video, there is actually a global keyboard shortcut to show/hide the sidebar without defocussing your editor. We're going to be experimenting more.
mkoble11 11y ago
Justin kan mentioned the upcoming launch of this on snapchat the other day and I was intrigued. This does look awesome!
d0m 11y ago
That's great, very exciting to have it internet based and to have it become smarter and smarter over time.
Cyph0n 11y ago
This looks really interesting. One question I have is how will you handle hotkeys? If I'm focused in my editor, I don't really want to have to move my mouse to select options suggested by Kite. Excellent demo. Concise, simple overview of features but with enough little details (loved that rm -rf warning!) to keep me interested, and really well-edited.
- mrkgnao 11y ago
  I certainly hope there is a way to use Kite comfortably with minimal/no mouse usage.
  - throwanem 11y ago
    The plugin API doesn't make it look likely.
  - jayhpatel 11y ago
    Hi, Jay from Kite here. Agreed. We are definitely heading in the direction of keyboard shortcuts to access key features in Kite. For example, we have Cmd+; for switching between your editor and Kite. And more are coming up. We want you to get the most relevant info without leaving your keyboard!
Dangeranger 11y ago
Often I work in a full screen editor environment like terminal Vim with Tmux. Are you considering support for a command line client that could run in a split pane or window alongside my terminal editor? If you implemented such functionality the suggestion experience could be more seamless for myself and those with similar workflows.
- adamsmith 11y ago
  Supporting the variety of dev setups will definitely be one of our challenges. We've tried to start addressing this with 2 column mode (not shown in the demo video, but happens when Kite is in landscape mode; good for multimon), snapping to the side of your screen, and left/right-handed orientations. This will be a long term effort. We have a lot more work to do here, along the lines of assisting with Z-index management, attaching to windows, etc. Overall there's a lot to do! We will get there and are signed up for the long term.
kevindeasis 11y ago
This would be even more amazing if it was free or cheap. It would be cool if they also open sourced it
- kleer001 11y ago
  I'm sure it will be one of many of the same kind of tool come time enough. I hope the team makes tons and tons of $$$. Also I can't wait to try it out!
- melling 11y ago
  What we be really cool is if you wrote an open source version. I'm sure if you started it, you'd find people to help once you reach minimal functionality.
melling 11y ago
Probably not the problem you're trying to solve but I'd like a better typing assistant as well as a co-pilot. For example, on the first line, I'd like to type "r" then be prompted for "import requests" Anywhere where the video had to be sped up is ripe for an advanced typing assistant. Typing entire lines like this seem unnecessary: "from left_pad import left_pad" I guess a super autosense along with Copilot would make for more exact coding.
- alexflint 11y ago
  Absolutely. We're going to be working on this for many years, and this is the kind of thing we're aiming at.
mwagstaff 11y ago
Agreed that this looks awesome. Seeing code completion and context sensitive help for running terminal commands (e.g. netstat), not just programming languages, was what made me hit the sign up button.
- djsumdog 11y ago
  You might want to check out the Fish shell. I've been using it for about a year and it supports completion for most commands by parsing their man pages. It's pretty nice.
  - mwagstaff 11y ago
    I tried Fish a while back, and liked it very much. Trouble is, I can't roll Fish out across a work server estate. Well, I could. But then I probably wouldn't be at work much longer. ;-)
bbrks 11y ago
I was about to ask some questions about exactly what gets sent to Kite and what you do with it. Your privacy page[0] answered my thoughts and concerns quite nicely. [0] https://kite.com/privacy https://kite.com/privacy
rckrd 11y ago
This is a great idea. I particularly think the trade-off between a separate tile vs. a traditional overlay is interesting. While we lose things like auto complete, it might be less intrusive for the times when we don't need help. It will be interesting to see if we see a new generation of smart IDEs.
BIackSwan 11y ago
left_pad.py - lol
Lewisham 11y ago
I was really excited, then very disappointed to see the code I type is sent to your servers. This immediately prevents it from being used by many businesses, including my employers. Super bummer :( Please get the on-prem sorted out pronto!
- hathym 11y ago
  seriously, I don't think anyone is after your code.
  - mattnewton 11y ago
    Tell that to a tech Fortune 500's legal department.
    - capote 11y ago
      Not even. I work for a 30 person company and I can't even share my own personal code with third parties.
      - qz_ 11y ago
        Wait what
        capote 11y ago
        Yep... I'm exaggerating but I did trade some freedom to post whatever code I want wherever for a better salary. It's not uncommon for contracts to give employers ownership of any ideas/code an employee comes up with, or to specifically prohibit freelancing or contribution to open source.
        chrisfosterelli 11y ago
        That sounds absolutely terrible... but to each their own I suppose.
hathym 11y ago
I'm very impressed!
falcolas 11y ago
Privacy question - what will Kite do with the source code stored in its databases when/if Kite shuts down or is acquired? How will you respect the licenses of the files you upload? (paraphrased) "You trust Github/Slack, why not also trust us?" Perhaps because Github and Slack's monitization models are well known, and Kite's are not. It's a great concept for a tool, but I could never get it to fly at work. I couldn't even begin to imagine trying to convince a technically savvy cofounder (let alone their lawyer) with "let me use this tool which uploads all of our code to their server."
- alexflint 11y ago
  Alex from kite here. Re privacy: we totally agree that it's a legit concern. when we started working on this we realized if we wanted to index tens of thousands of libraries, we wouldn't be able to ship the entire index along with the client. Hence the cloud-based architecture. We've thought a lot about privacy and written up our thoughts here: www.kite.com/privacy. The short answer is: we don't index anything on your computer that you don't explicitly ask us to, and our plan is to earn trust the hard (i.e. only) way: transparency, published policies, and a track record of good decision making.
  - rootlocus 11y ago
    How about offering an on-site solution, where the client can deploy the Kite service on their own machines?
    - alexflint 11y ago
      It's something we've thought a lot about. For anybody interested in this, shoot us a message at onprem@kite.com
    - bisby 11y ago
      I would agree with this. Every client doesn't need this running, but having it running locally would be nice. I imagine, a business with many programmers all using this would get pretty cluttered with constant updates to this, but an onsite installation could easily clean that up. Even if you have to ship individual backend modules (when more languages get supported). One place might only need the bash/python/js syntax whereas another might need only php, etc.
groundCode 11y ago
Autocomplete on steroids. This looks very cool and the demo vid was very well done!
quantum_nerd 11y ago
All "my BigTech Co won't let me use this at work" and other privacy concerns aside, this is an amazing tool for budding programmers or experienced ones using an unfamiliar language. Can't wait to try it out!
libeclipse 11y ago
This isn't that big a deal IMO. For a start, any non-trivial complex problem will probably not be included in kite, and the trivial stuff is generally memorised or easily googled. This is really only spoon feeding.
- aeorgnoieang 11y ago
  I guess it depends on what a 'big deal' is exactly, but if it saves me all the Googling I do now then it'll be really useful (to me). I don't expect them to really provide an intelligent artificial pair programmer, so you're right that this won't help with "any non-trivial complex problem", but that's okay with me. I don't mind being spoon fed stuff I'm not interested in acquiring 'the hard way'. Do you also disdain autocompletion in your code editors?
  - libeclipse 11y ago
    Funnily enough, I've never used auto-completion. I've even gone through the trouble of deactivating it in Atom, but disdain is a strong word. Also, it just occurred to me that Kite is basically a keylogger. Every keystroke is sent to their servers. That requires a lot of trust.
    - fokinsean 11y ago
      > Funnily enough, I've never used auto-completion. I've even gone through the trouble of deactivating it in Atom, Super 1337 bro
    - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
      Fair enough. And certainly Kite could be a keylogger. So you're right that using it requires a lot of trust.
  - libeclipse 11y ago
    One thing I will say though. Is that I greatly respect 'the hard way'.
aeorgnoieang 11y ago
This looks fantastic. It would be great to get this working in Light Table. Another commenter asked about hotkeys and I'd like to pile on to that sentiment – I've recently started using Vim (and Vimium) and it's really disappointing not being able to navigate by keyboard.
DanteVertigo 11y ago
This kind of tool destroys ones ability to program long sustainable production code. For a novice programmer this has tremendous negative effect on the learning curve. For an experienced programmer this tool is useless, because an experienced programmer will NEVER rely on "popularity" of some code-snippet out there in the wild. Programming is a very intense and deep practice and it is certainly not crafted using this kind of tools. This tool helps people write poor quality code for customers. Makes me wonder, what Knuth would say on this?
- rootlocus 11y ago
  IntelliJ already has most of what this tool offers (but for java as opposed to python). It has auto-complete, quick access to documentation, quick fix suggestions (such as missing imports, etc.) and many many others not available in Kite at the moment. You wouldn't say IntelliJ "destroys ones ability to program long sustainable production code" would you? Because if you would, you'd be absolutely wrong.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - DanteVertigo 10y ago
    IntelliJ certainly doesn't do this. IntelliJ and Kite have functionalities in common, which are fine. The other parts of Kite that IntelliJ hasn't, are problematic.
- anthnguyen94 11y ago
  What about experts who are transitioning new languages or technologies? I'd say this tool has tremendous value for them. Also, as long as novice programmers understand the fundamentals (DS, algorithms) something like this won't have a 'tremendous negative effect' on their learning curve.
  - DanteVertigo 10y ago
    In my opinion Kite is promoting "coding by gluing" which certainly gets the job done in our economy but it is not yielding long sustainable code.
cdnsteve 11y ago
So if there was an open source version of this, I'd use it. I would never trust it otherwise. Large corps will never trust it either, IT sec policies would roast you for using this. Instead I see an opportunity for IDE's to step up this space and provide this built in, without copying and keeping your source code. "What information does Kite keep around on its servers? Usage information about which results you click on in the sidebar. Contents of all Python files in enabled directories."
- lelandbatey 11y ago
  Exactly, I really don't want to have to tie myself to a single company for my tools, and I definitely don't want to be handing over all the code I type to that same company. Having a company sponsored key logger just to remove googling for documentation/basic autocomplete is not something I'm interested in doing.
wuliwong 11y ago
I thought I was signing up for Kite not for Kite's email list. Pretty misleading copy. Nowhere does it say "Coming soon" or anything to that effect. Also, there seems to be no confirmation email.
- alexflint 11y ago
  Sorry if there was any confusion, but just FYI we're sending out the first invites today, so we're definitely "in motion".
deleted 11y ago
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bluetidepro 11y ago
I don't want undermine the value of this product, but this seems like something that I've (and many others) sort of already solved by using products like Dash [1] and Alfred [2] together. You can easily and quickly find all info on docs while working right in Sublime Text, or while also using an IDE to read into functions throughout your project. And maybe I'm missing more what this product does, but that's just what I noticed based on the video. [1] https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash [2] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/
- dustinmr 11y ago
  Interesting. How are you connecting Dash and Alfred to arrive at something similar?
  - Dangeranger 11y ago
    I have used both the Alfred workflow https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-Alfred-Workflow https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-Alfred-Workflow and the Vim connection https://github.com/rizzatti/dash.vim https://github.com/rizzatti/dash.vim in the past. They are useful and provide very fast symbol lookup.
    - n13 11y ago
      Or, if you use SublimeText then DashDoc comes really handy. [1] https://github.com/farcaller/DashDoc https://github.com/farcaller/DashDoc
- Zyst 11y ago
  I use Dash everyday and I think it would be disingenuous to say that it solves the same 'problem' that Kite looks like it's trying to solve. I can certainly see some degree of overlap, but they seem like quite different programs.
neil_s 11y ago
This is awesome! I was going to build something similar, just for the terminal, but extending it to code editors as well makes total sense. And what an all-star team!
aub3bhat 11y ago
I think this looks great, but it reminded me of Lightable. Also rather than using Sublime text as a comparison, isn't PyCharm a better comparison. In my opinion Pycharm already provides a subset of functionality, in addition to several other features.
- aeorgnoieang 11y ago
  https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/2188 https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/2188
sneak 11y ago
(scribbles with mouse, clicks on things) "When I open my terminal...." I am evidently not the target market. Do professionals actually identify with this stuff? Am I really that out of touch when I think that that much mousing around is CRAZY slow? And who switches back and forth from GUI editors to a terminal?
- fizzbatter 11y ago
  Slower for me, i use a laptop and trackpad. "Mouse" for me is very slow by comparison to keys.
- noahlt 10y ago
  Noah from Kite here. We're prototyping various keyboard shortcut schemes; we're excited to ship whatever we settle on.
zuck9 11y ago
This is similar to the Developer Assistant plugin for Visual Studio made by Microsoft: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/onecode/p/devassistant/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/onecode/p/devassistant/
giulianob 11y ago
This is really cool. It reminds me of OmniSharp which provides Intellisense to any IDE. It just runs as a background process listening on HTTP so adding intelligent autocompletion to a text editor is fairly easy. I like this approach a lot.
e0m 11y ago
This is amazing. Documentation pages that list methods alphabetically, or by some other random order, drive me crazy! Just being able to show me function calls by frequency and relevance would make Kite worth it. And there's so much more! Very excited about this.
irq11 11y ago
The title is a bit misleading. This only works for Python and OSX.
- jayhpatel 11y ago
  Jay from Kite here. We're on our way to supporting more languages and operating systems. Stay tuned! Pro tip: when you sign up on our website, you can also specify which language you use so we can keep you in the loop when we get to it!
  - irq11 11y ago
    You folks have a big team, and have been working on this for two years now. Promising another language in the future doesn't mean the title is right.
    - eXpl0it3r 10y ago
      It can't be used right now anyways, so if it currently doesn't support your favorite language, what does it matter? Who knows what it will support once we get an alpha/beta/release version? Do you also tell the people that show you a prototype of their product that they are misleading you, because they claim to build an extended product out of that prototype?
ausjke 11y ago
I have long wished nodejs provides such helpful info, e.g. when I use the nodejs APIs I can get hints on the syntax and even some concise demo for usage, instead of opening a webpage and read online each time. Both python and PHP provide man pages for all their APIs etc, but no such thing for nodejs yet.
antiffan 11y ago
Super cool concept. One thought: when I'm using my laptop I have limited screen space. It would be awesome to be able to use Kite on my phone's screen, with my phone clipped to my laptop using something like this: https://tenonedesign.com/mountie.php https://tenonedesign.com/mountie.php
noonespecial 11y ago
So it's watching my bash terminal? Does it send my passwords on over to your servers when I ssh somewhere without keys?
- alexflint 11y ago
  No! If you can't see it (as visible chars) on your terminal then Kite is not seeing it.
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    It sees all the visible chars? Not just what I type? So every time I ls all of my filenames and dirs get sent? That might be worse.
  - discordance 10y ago
    This seems dubious. Does that mean key loggers can't see it?
saltycraig 11y ago
He should've put left_pad.py in a folder with an __init__.py to make it a proper package ;)
sulam 11y ago
So, this looks pretty damn awesome, and I want to try it out yesterday! Seems like a lot of people are worried about privacy, and I guess I understand that. But I want this for when I'm learning a new language, and I honestly don't much care what happens with that code. Also I think people are way too worried about their code. It's vanishingly rare that _the code_ is where the value in a business is. "But if I had Google's source code, I could run my own search engine and put them out of business!" Really? Could you? Because last I checked, Google has more engineers working on search than any other company on the planet. The stuff they do next week is probably going to improve their code more than what you would do by yourself for the entire year. And that's just the code, there's far more to search than algorithms.
- 0xffff2 11y ago
  >Also I think people are way too worried about their code. I don't think anyone in this thread is worried about their code. The problem is that most of us work somewhere where we write code that isn't ours, and as such continued employment is contingent on us following the policies of the company. This generally include not sharing proprietary code.
  - sulam 11y ago
    I don't know everyone in the thread, so I can't comment specifically to them. You're right that getting fired over using this thing would be suboptimal. :) I'm still eager to try it out!
mkagenius 11y ago
Does it search Stack overflow along?
chinathrow 11y ago
Nice tool, very nice demo video. Unusable since I won't let my code be indexed by a third party. Also unusable since I won't let a third party have access to my shell. Imagine having your bash history stored centrally - a prime target for LEO/security services/black hats/data mining. However - the code assistant is nice and I would love to have it running locally with a shared intelligent index - OSS based.
fareesh 11y ago
This looks great - can't wait to try it. Can I beg for an invite here?
pknerd 11y ago
Hopefully there will be a bit less traffic on Stackoverflow after using that. :-)
stcredzero 11y ago
No nerds were harmed in the making of this product. So no questions asked on IRC?
eridius 11y ago
This looks very slick. However, as others have said, uploading all source code to your servers is a pretty serious issue when working on anything other than open source projects. Also, when asking about editors while signing up, you listed "XCode". That's not the correct spelling, it should be "Xcode" (lowercase c). Also, you should allow for selecting multiple languages/editors. I selected Swift/Xcode because that's my day job, but I also use Swift/Vim in some cases, and I use Vim for languages other than Swift/Obj-C. In fact, I'm guessing Kite won't be nearly as useful for Swift/Xcode as it would be for other languages, because Xcode already provides a lot of this functionality (e.g. intelligent code completion and quick help for any API).
- azinman2 11y ago
  I wouldn't say Xcode is providing this... kite looks to be going much further in providing examples, alternatives, etc with a diff screen real estate philosophy. I welcome it.
  - eridius 11y ago
    Yeah Xcode doesn't do everything Kite does, but it does enough that Kite isn't nearly so compelling there. And Xcode has the benefit of being 100% accurate with its code completion and quick help, whereas it remains to be seen how accurate Kite will be on that front.
nodesocket 11y ago
How does Kite protect against accidental API keys and passwords in source code (copy/paste) being shipped to them?
cmiller1 11y ago
Maybe I'm behind the curve, but I still use TextMate, is there any chance a plug-in is in the works for it?
clio 11y ago
At age 13, I completed my PhD at Google while having an internship at MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. By age 15 I won the Nobel Prize while working at my tenth SV startup. My name is Franklin, and I drink wine on the weekends.
mibrah 11y ago
TBH this has been such a long time coming. There has always been one of two extremes, logic based compiler-like tools that rely on a type system or static builtin library knowledge should have been replaced by fuzzy, internet integrated smart IDEs long ago. Part of me fears that too many programmers are long on tooling / GSD skills and short on software engineering and computer science fundamentals, which will become a worse and worse choice as Machine Learning aided boilerplate/busywork cutters become incorporated into IDEs and compilers.
werber 11y ago
For the early sign up it be cool if you could specify that you write in multiple languages and across multiple platforms to get invites as soon as possible. This looks like an amazing tool for a more hands off teaching style.
canistr 11y ago
Is it really a launch if very few people have access to it in a private beta? All this noise on Twitter/FB/HN/etc. doesn't help when we don't get a chance to play around with it. Just saying.
tomphoolery 11y ago
What's with the invite? Is this a service or something? What about this requires it to be proprietary and hosted elsewhere?
megacity 11y ago
I don't understand why this needs to store all the typed code on their server. Couldn't this data just be deleted once the lookup has run?
- aeorgnoieang 10y ago
  I imagine they're using all the code they get to update their 'what is popular' examples for all the subsequent lookups; or that's what they want to be able to do.
- llamataboot 10y ago
  Of course it could be. They want to monetize it somehow.
dangoor 11y ago
First of all, this is a cool looking tool. Useful, well-organized, easily-accessed information is always a wonderful thing. I think a model like Dash would work a lot better: Rather than opting in my code to be sent up to Kite's servers, I opt in to the packages I'm interested in having indexes for. In some cases, as with node, there are ways to see what packages my project depends on and then those bits of indexed data could be sent to me. My computer has a 512GB SSD. I could devote 10GB to indexes of libraries and my own code without blinking. The argument that it's too much data and therefore belongs in the cloud doesn't seem to hold up. Also, there are cases where I'm not online... this is one of the great things about Dash. I have fast access to library docs anywhere I happen to be.
- deleted 11y ago
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- albasha 11y ago
  > My computer has a 512GB SSD. I could devote 10GB to indexes of libraries and my own code without blinking Mine has 128GB, less than 10GB free.
  - Retr0spectrum 11y ago
    A 512GB ssd costs somewhere around £100. That puts the cost of 10GB at about £2.
    - albasha 11y ago
      Not really willing to change the SSD that came with my 2015 Mac.
    - ropiku 11y ago
      That's for 2.5" SATA SSDs. Some people have embedded PCIe drives. And on some macs they are soldered. Regardless, reserving 10GB for offline help isn't that bad.
      - 10y ago
notliketherest 11y ago
This is really cool, and I wish you luck. It has great potential for educational purposes as well! I'd like to download it and try it when it's launched for my personal projects; however, I won't be able to use this at work (no way I'd get buy in to upload our source code lol). It'd be great to see local indexing on the roadmap for the future.
lawl 11y ago
While I really like the idea, there's a couple of no gos here: * Only supports python (as of now, I know you said you'll do others) * No Linux support (yet) * Uploads code to your servers * Wants me to sign up to a crappy newsletter Really liked all the jokes in the video though. But I'm not convinced (yet), sorry. And there's the issue that's I'd want to test it before recommending buying it to my employer. But I don't do enterprise Java for fun, so there's completely different languages and libraries between the open source projects where I could upload the code (but don't want to because fuck everything cloud, also I won't pay for it, because I'm not making any money) and the for work projects (where I personally don't give a shit, but all the libraries/frameworks the we/the customer bought are proprietary). And maybe even the customer wouldn't like his code being uploaded somewhere, but they usually don't really care about the code.
odbol_ 11y ago
The juxtaposition between seeing this on the frontpage today, and the VIM 8.0 announcement on the frontpage yesterday, is hilarious.
jackcosgrove 11y ago
Many organizations already upload their source code to GitHub. I could get behind a tool like this that could scan GitHub repositories and build an on-premise index.
baby 11y ago
First, this is amazing. I want. Second, I do a lot of code readings that include not shareable code, I would imagine a lot of developers from a lot of companies would be in the same position. From https://kite.com/privacy/ https://kite.com/privacy/: * all the python files in your authorized directories are sent over the network * everything you type in these files are sent as well * all the terminal commands you are going to type (ouch ouch) > Q: How does Kite secure this network traffic? > A: As you would expect, all traffic goes over https. Yeah unfortunately that is not enough, a MITM can also use https. How do you authenticate the server? Do you have certificate pinning? > What information does Kite keep around on its servers? Pretty much all the info I previously talked about, that you are now worrying about, is kept there, in clear (correct me if I'm wrong). This is a big no-no at this point. > Many developers have already chosen to trust their code to services such as Github and Bitbucket Many developers also do not trust Github/Bitbucket with there code (and they should not) and do not store secrets there. And who would want github to have access all the terminal commands they type? This sounds like a nightmare. At this point I don't see why anyone would use that, if not in a VM, with extreme care on what commands are typed in the terminal and what code is used with Kite.
p01926 11y ago
I dream about a tool like this every time I need to look something up, which only happens about a hundred times every day. I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE. But reading the kite.com/privacy doc is absolutely gutting. They copy and keep all your code, permanently. That's fine for an open-source project, but it's a deal breaker for anything else. So thanks for the brilliant idea, but I'll wait for it to be implemented in a way compatible with my everyday workflow.
asimuvPR 10y ago
This is nice. Could we get a general description of what tech it is built on top of?
drcongo 10y ago
Could I suggest some kind of per directory .kiteignore file?
shade23 10y ago
While I realise that this could be helpful with editors.I do not see much use with IDEs.and when it comes to languages like Android/iOS/WebApps ?People tend to use IDEs.(I am not making my opinion the general opinion here). And when people google things,Documentations are often the last resort.You tend to google the exception or the specific condition and end up on StackOverflow where some one facing a similar problem solved it by using something which was mentioned somewhere deep in the documentation. Also if documentation and a few examples could work in most real world apps,then we really wouldn't need sites like Stack Overflow. Simple use case: the `man` and `help` command are useful when you have not been able to solve for your particular use case.Else I would still prefer doing a google search which would tell me how to scp a file with the syntax and placeholders instead of reading the documentation. The examples would help in this regard.But then again I am not sure how much.Normally documentation list pretty straight forward examples which any editor/IDE with intellisense (even Sublime provides a bit of prediction with plugins) ,should be able to provide. This also goes against the tendency of comparing.Normally while trying to solve a problem,I tend to open 2~3 similar 'answers' which help me drill down to my particular problem.Whereas here I would be restricted to only a single solution.I love the idea for the technology involved.But I am not completely convinced with the help that it could provide.
educar 10y ago
Great video :-) Loved the left pad joke and duly noted down your panama account information.
llamataboot 10y ago
Hmmm. Regarding one member of their team: "Prior to Kite, he was a tech lead at Homejoy, driving customer acquisition and retention." Not to spread tooooo much guilt by association, but didn't Homejoy just get roasted around here not too long ago for what thy did with the data on their servers? [1] Doesn't really make me feel the warm fuzzies for what they might do with all that data if they shut down. [1] https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e8d7a2dfb485#.97zeolsll https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e...
vinitagr 10y ago
Looks like an amazing tool. Have to use it before i can tell more. Showing the documentation and example is cool and all, a very useful feature would be the search and analysis of the error messages upon program compilation/run. Most likely from stackOverflow. This will make things so much easier. Reminds me of how2 https://github.com/santinic/how2 https://github.com/santinic/how2
mkelley82 10y ago
What about support for VS Code?
- alexkavon 10y ago
  Yes hopefully there will be integration for VS Code and Visual Studio. Though Microsoft already has a similar plugin, but this is purdier.
- huuu 10y ago
  You might like ReSharper from JetBrains. I think it's the best I ever used.
SanPilot 10y ago
> Left padding is so complicated that I've pulled it out into its own file, as you can see here. Am I just really ignorant, or is this satire?
- rckrd 10y ago
  Its satire directed towards the recent npm package fiasco (there was a 'leftpad' library by the original author who pulled his packages)[0]. The authors make a few other witty jokes in the video as well. [0]http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm
- alexkavon 10y ago
  Definitely satire.
heinrichf 10y ago
Who wants to build an open-source cross-platform clone ?
febed 10y ago
Great idea! But doesn't it work by intercepting keystrokes? What prevents Kite from reading keystrokes in other applications like a browser?
plaidturtle 10y ago
Loved the humor in the intro video :D
jiiam 10y ago
Ok, this convinced me. At first I was skeptical, but looking at how it works compared to existing methods that need a ton of configuration, I believe it is at least worth a try. More importantly, I believe it appeals to newcomers. We are getting into a world where learning the proper way of coding requires a lot more than the famous 10.000 hours, mostly because there are hundreds of standards. This tool might become a much nicer introduction for newbies, compared to digging through pages of documentations in search for the one example that satisfy your use-case (I'm talking to you, Python requests).
sandman83 10y ago
awesome. intellisense on steroids.
ElijahLynn 10y ago
Very interesting. But closed. Not open.
slantaclaus 10y ago
I hope it supports TextMate...

1138 points by wodow 11y ago

andretti1977 11y ago

Well, definitely this is a great project but at the moment, for what i was able to see in the demo video, the main features are very similar to code completion and API exploring as i can currently perform with my ide (i develop mainly java based app so IntellijIdea or Eclipse give me quite the same help). Don't want to be rude but it doesn't seem like this tool may currently enhance my productivity.

not_kurt_godel 11y ago
Definitely agree with you. Clearly, this is a tool that has the potential to make Python programming easier by adding functionality similar to what you can inherently get out of the box with a statically typed language + a good IDE. On the other hand, it also underscores Python's deficiencies as a language. I used to love Python, and still do, but I would never use it for a large project of any substantial complexity since I've seen how tremendously useful static typing is both for writing code and, arguably more importantly, reading and analyzing existing code. A couple of huge advantages are very robust auto-completion, the ability to quickly and immediately jump to the source code of a given type, and finding references to a given type across the codebase without ambiguity. Kite gets you part of the way, but the nature of Python means it'll never beat Java in these aspects.
alexflint 11y ago
The main difference versus IDEs is that everything we show is informed by all the public code we've collected from the web. So e.g. there are a ton of arguments to matplotlib.plot and IDEs can show you them all ranked alphabetically, whereas we can show you common patterns of how people actually use matplotlib.plot in practice, which is often far more useful. (We'll show you the docs, too.) Another example is if you type "load('abc.json')" without having imported json: there are hundreds of python packages that define a function called "load", but "json" and "simplejson" are by _far_ the most widely used, so we can suggest that you "from json import load". That's something you can't do unless you have a good model of a lot of real-world code.
- nhaliday 10y ago
  Any comments on how your product and plans compare to https://sourcegraph.com/ https://sourcegraph.com/? They seem to have a similar offering with an on-premise version, though lacking the smooth editor integration.

adamsmith 11y ago

Hi everyone, we couldn't be more excited to tell you about Kite and get your feedback! We think connecting programming environments to a smart backend will improve programming in a lot of ways, and this is just the first step. We'd love to hear your thoughts on where we should go from here!

jobvandervoort 11y ago
This looks great! Loved the left-pad joke in there. Could you elaborate on when it'll be available? Will you make it or parts open source?
- adamcanady 11y ago
  Also the hostname of "TayandYou".
  - jdiez17 11y ago
    And the icons on the desktop.
  - saltycraig 11y ago
    And the rm -rf / joke ;)
  - ipince 11y ago
    And the Batman v Superman. lol
- adamsmith 11y ago
  We will begin inviting folks today. We want to control the upramp for two reasons: first, with desktop software, every time you take a step up in user base order-of-magnitude (1 -> 10 -> 100 ...) you see new bugs from odd desktop configurations. For example, we've already had one user whose machine wouldn't resolve "localhost" when docker was running : ) Second, we have to also manage backend scaling. We have some pretty strong systems engineers, but maybe because they're experienced they know what they don't know! But we want everyone to be using it ASAP also. RE open source, today we open sourced our client plugins (http://github.com/kiteco/plugins http://github.com/kiteco/plugins), and published instructions for writing your own. If you use an editor that isn't supported, it's about a 2-3 day project to create a plugin for a new editor. : )

fizzbatter 11y ago

This looks really cool. Bothers me having my code sent over, because i can't use it for a variety of use cases, but for my personal work i may give it a try. I've got two main desires though: 1. In editor pane. I use Vim in a full screen term, and really want want to deal with managing OS windows to allow a Kite window side by side with iTerm2. Perhaps an overlay would be solve this? That way it works for bash/etc? 2. Rust support. I'm learning rust lately, and this sort of tool could really benefit me with a learner-error-prone language like Rust. Based on the signup form though, Rust does not appear available.

alexflint 11y ago
1. Yeah, I agree. It's hard, and it's something we continue to iterate on. How would you feel about a global keyboard shortcut that would show/hide the overlay that was a separate application? 2. I love Rust. We will get to it even though it's (sadly) not at the top of our list right now.

lincolnq 11y ago

Wow, this looks pretty amazing - well done with the demo. I'm super excited to try it out, how soon will it be ready?

adamsmith 11y ago
We have some folks outside of the company using Kite already, and will be scaling that up as quickly as we can!

_ZeD_ 11y ago

I was exited until: What platforms does Kite run on? For now, Kite only works on OS X, but we'll support Linux and Windows soon, too. bummer :(

Cyph0n 11y ago
It's good to polish it first for one OS. Honestly, I would have been disappointed with them if it were otherwise.
adamsmith 11y ago
I started slinging code in Visual Basic 5 back in the day, and ran Windows until recently. I hope to be able to jump into building the Windows client soon : ) Fortunately all of our UI is html and javascript, so no windows controls needed : )
- zuck9 11y ago
  Electron?
- Vekz 11y ago
  +1 for Electron sounds like you have a knowledge gap and are missing an easy cross platform opportunity.

Dangeranger 11y ago

Do you support code linting or code smells in addition to completions?

martinni 11y ago

Looks great! The only thing is I don't like the thought of having to share my screen real estate. Would it be possible to have some kind of navigable popup box within the editor?

alexflint 11y ago
Yeah this is something we're still iterating on. Though it wasn't in the demo video, there is actually a global keyboard shortcut to show/hide the sidebar without defocussing your editor. We're going to be experimenting more.

mkoble11 11y ago

Justin kan mentioned the upcoming launch of this on snapchat the other day and I was intrigued. This does look awesome!

d0m 11y ago

That's great, very exciting to have it internet based and to have it become smarter and smarter over time.

Cyph0n 11y ago

This looks really interesting. One question I have is how will you handle hotkeys? If I'm focused in my editor, I don't really want to have to move my mouse to select options suggested by Kite. Excellent demo. Concise, simple overview of features but with enough little details (loved that rm -rf warning!) to keep me interested, and really well-edited.

mrkgnao 11y ago
I certainly hope there is a way to use Kite comfortably with minimal/no mouse usage.
- throwanem 11y ago
  The plugin API doesn't make it look likely.
- jayhpatel 11y ago
  Hi, Jay from Kite here. Agreed. We are definitely heading in the direction of keyboard shortcuts to access key features in Kite. For example, we have Cmd+; for switching between your editor and Kite. And more are coming up. We want you to get the most relevant info without leaving your keyboard!

Dangeranger 11y ago

Often I work in a full screen editor environment like terminal Vim with Tmux. Are you considering support for a command line client that could run in a split pane or window alongside my terminal editor? If you implemented such functionality the suggestion experience could be more seamless for myself and those with similar workflows.

adamsmith 11y ago
Supporting the variety of dev setups will definitely be one of our challenges. We've tried to start addressing this with 2 column mode (not shown in the demo video, but happens when Kite is in landscape mode; good for multimon), snapping to the side of your screen, and left/right-handed orientations. This will be a long term effort. We have a lot more work to do here, along the lines of assisting with Z-index management, attaching to windows, etc. Overall there's a lot to do! We will get there and are signed up for the long term.

kevindeasis 11y ago

This would be even more amazing if it was free or cheap. It would be cool if they also open sourced it

kleer001 11y ago
I'm sure it will be one of many of the same kind of tool come time enough. I hope the team makes tons and tons of $$$. Also I can't wait to try it out!
melling 11y ago
What we be really cool is if you wrote an open source version. I'm sure if you started it, you'd find people to help once you reach minimal functionality.

melling 11y ago

Probably not the problem you're trying to solve but I'd like a better typing assistant as well as a co-pilot. For example, on the first line, I'd like to type "r" then be prompted for "import requests" Anywhere where the video had to be sped up is ripe for an advanced typing assistant. Typing entire lines like this seem unnecessary: "from left_pad import left_pad" I guess a super autosense along with Copilot would make for more exact coding.

alexflint 11y ago
Absolutely. We're going to be working on this for many years, and this is the kind of thing we're aiming at.

mwagstaff 11y ago

Agreed that this looks awesome. Seeing code completion and context sensitive help for running terminal commands (e.g. netstat), not just programming languages, was what made me hit the sign up button.

djsumdog 11y ago
You might want to check out the Fish shell. I've been using it for about a year and it supports completion for most commands by parsing their man pages. It's pretty nice.
- mwagstaff 11y ago
  I tried Fish a while back, and liked it very much. Trouble is, I can't roll Fish out across a work server estate. Well, I could. But then I probably wouldn't be at work much longer. ;-)

bbrks 11y ago

I was about to ask some questions about exactly what gets sent to Kite and what you do with it. Your privacy page[0] answered my thoughts and concerns quite nicely. [0] https://kite.com/privacy https://kite.com/privacy

rckrd 11y ago

This is a great idea. I particularly think the trade-off between a separate tile vs. a traditional overlay is interesting. While we lose things like auto complete, it might be less intrusive for the times when we don't need help. It will be interesting to see if we see a new generation of smart IDEs.

BIackSwan 11y ago

left_pad.py - lol

Lewisham 11y ago

I was really excited, then very disappointed to see the code I type is sent to your servers. This immediately prevents it from being used by many businesses, including my employers. Super bummer :( Please get the on-prem sorted out pronto!

hathym 11y ago
seriously, I don't think anyone is after your code.
- mattnewton 11y ago
  Tell that to a tech Fortune 500's legal department.
  - capote 11y ago
    Not even. I work for a 30 person company and I can't even share my own personal code with third parties.
    - qz_ 11y ago
      Wait what
      - capote 11y ago
        Yep... I'm exaggerating but I did trade some freedom to post whatever code I want wherever for a better salary. It's not uncommon for contracts to give employers ownership of any ideas/code an employee comes up with, or to specifically prohibit freelancing or contribution to open source.
        chrisfosterelli 11y ago
        That sounds absolutely terrible... but to each their own I suppose.

hathym 11y ago

I'm very impressed!

falcolas 11y ago

Privacy question - what will Kite do with the source code stored in its databases when/if Kite shuts down or is acquired? How will you respect the licenses of the files you upload? (paraphrased) "You trust Github/Slack, why not also trust us?" Perhaps because Github and Slack's monitization models are well known, and Kite's are not. It's a great concept for a tool, but I could never get it to fly at work. I couldn't even begin to imagine trying to convince a technically savvy cofounder (let alone their lawyer) with "let me use this tool which uploads all of our code to their server."

alexflint 11y ago
Alex from kite here. Re privacy: we totally agree that it's a legit concern. when we started working on this we realized if we wanted to index tens of thousands of libraries, we wouldn't be able to ship the entire index along with the client. Hence the cloud-based architecture. We've thought a lot about privacy and written up our thoughts here: www.kite.com/privacy. The short answer is: we don't index anything on your computer that you don't explicitly ask us to, and our plan is to earn trust the hard (i.e. only) way: transparency, published policies, and a track record of good decision making.
- rootlocus 11y ago
  How about offering an on-site solution, where the client can deploy the Kite service on their own machines?
  - alexflint 11y ago
    It's something we've thought a lot about. For anybody interested in this, shoot us a message at onprem@kite.com
  - bisby 11y ago
    I would agree with this. Every client doesn't need this running, but having it running locally would be nice. I imagine, a business with many programmers all using this would get pretty cluttered with constant updates to this, but an onsite installation could easily clean that up. Even if you have to ship individual backend modules (when more languages get supported). One place might only need the bash/python/js syntax whereas another might need only php, etc.

groundCode 11y ago

Autocomplete on steroids. This looks very cool and the demo vid was very well done!

quantum_nerd 11y ago

All "my BigTech Co won't let me use this at work" and other privacy concerns aside, this is an amazing tool for budding programmers or experienced ones using an unfamiliar language. Can't wait to try it out!

libeclipse 11y ago

This isn't that big a deal IMO. For a start, any non-trivial complex problem will probably not be included in kite, and the trivial stuff is generally memorised or easily googled. This is really only spoon feeding.

aeorgnoieang 11y ago
I guess it depends on what a 'big deal' is exactly, but if it saves me all the Googling I do now then it'll be really useful (to me). I don't expect them to really provide an intelligent artificial pair programmer, so you're right that this won't help with "any non-trivial complex problem", but that's okay with me. I don't mind being spoon fed stuff I'm not interested in acquiring 'the hard way'. Do you also disdain autocompletion in your code editors?
- libeclipse 11y ago
  Funnily enough, I've never used auto-completion. I've even gone through the trouble of deactivating it in Atom, but disdain is a strong word. Also, it just occurred to me that Kite is basically a keylogger. Every keystroke is sent to their servers. That requires a lot of trust.
  - fokinsean 11y ago
    > Funnily enough, I've never used auto-completion. I've even gone through the trouble of deactivating it in Atom, Super 1337 bro
  - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
    Fair enough. And certainly Kite could be a keylogger. So you're right that using it requires a lot of trust.
- libeclipse 11y ago
  One thing I will say though. Is that I greatly respect 'the hard way'.

aeorgnoieang 11y ago

This looks fantastic. It would be great to get this working in Light Table. Another commenter asked about hotkeys and I'd like to pile on to that sentiment – I've recently started using Vim (and Vimium) and it's really disappointing not being able to navigate by keyboard.

DanteVertigo 11y ago

This kind of tool destroys ones ability to program long sustainable production code. For a novice programmer this has tremendous negative effect on the learning curve. For an experienced programmer this tool is useless, because an experienced programmer will NEVER rely on "popularity" of some code-snippet out there in the wild. Programming is a very intense and deep practice and it is certainly not crafted using this kind of tools. This tool helps people write poor quality code for customers. Makes me wonder, what Knuth would say on this?

rootlocus 11y ago
IntelliJ already has most of what this tool offers (but for java as opposed to python). It has auto-complete, quick access to documentation, quick fix suggestions (such as missing imports, etc.) and many many others not available in Kite at the moment. You wouldn't say IntelliJ "destroys ones ability to program long sustainable production code" would you? Because if you would, you'd be absolutely wrong.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- DanteVertigo 10y ago
  IntelliJ certainly doesn't do this. IntelliJ and Kite have functionalities in common, which are fine. The other parts of Kite that IntelliJ hasn't, are problematic.
anthnguyen94 11y ago
What about experts who are transitioning new languages or technologies? I'd say this tool has tremendous value for them. Also, as long as novice programmers understand the fundamentals (DS, algorithms) something like this won't have a 'tremendous negative effect' on their learning curve.
- DanteVertigo 10y ago
  In my opinion Kite is promoting "coding by gluing" which certainly gets the job done in our economy but it is not yielding long sustainable code.

cdnsteve 11y ago

So if there was an open source version of this, I'd use it. I would never trust it otherwise. Large corps will never trust it either, IT sec policies would roast you for using this. Instead I see an opportunity for IDE's to step up this space and provide this built in, without copying and keeping your source code. "What information does Kite keep around on its servers? Usage information about which results you click on in the sidebar. Contents of all Python files in enabled directories."

lelandbatey 11y ago
Exactly, I really don't want to have to tie myself to a single company for my tools, and I definitely don't want to be handing over all the code I type to that same company. Having a company sponsored key logger just to remove googling for documentation/basic autocomplete is not something I'm interested in doing.

wuliwong 11y ago

I thought I was signing up for Kite not for Kite's email list. Pretty misleading copy. Nowhere does it say "Coming soon" or anything to that effect. Also, there seems to be no confirmation email.

alexflint 11y ago
Sorry if there was any confusion, but just FYI we're sending out the first invites today, so we're definitely "in motion".

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bluetidepro 11y ago

I don't want undermine the value of this product, but this seems like something that I've (and many others) sort of already solved by using products like Dash [1] and Alfred [2] together. You can easily and quickly find all info on docs while working right in Sublime Text, or while also using an IDE to read into functions throughout your project. And maybe I'm missing more what this product does, but that's just what I noticed based on the video. [1] https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash [2] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/

dustinmr 11y ago
Interesting. How are you connecting Dash and Alfred to arrive at something similar?
- Dangeranger 11y ago
  I have used both the Alfred workflow https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-Alfred-Workflow https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-Alfred-Workflow and the Vim connection https://github.com/rizzatti/dash.vim https://github.com/rizzatti/dash.vim in the past. They are useful and provide very fast symbol lookup.
  - n13 11y ago
    Or, if you use SublimeText then DashDoc comes really handy. [1] https://github.com/farcaller/DashDoc https://github.com/farcaller/DashDoc
Zyst 11y ago
I use Dash everyday and I think it would be disingenuous to say that it solves the same 'problem' that Kite looks like it's trying to solve. I can certainly see some degree of overlap, but they seem like quite different programs.

neil_s 11y ago

This is awesome! I was going to build something similar, just for the terminal, but extending it to code editors as well makes total sense. And what an all-star team!

aub3bhat 11y ago

I think this looks great, but it reminded me of Lightable. Also rather than using Sublime text as a comparison, isn't PyCharm a better comparison. In my opinion Pycharm already provides a subset of functionality, in addition to several other features.

aeorgnoieang 11y ago
https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/2188 https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/2188

sneak 11y ago

(scribbles with mouse, clicks on things) "When I open my terminal...." I am evidently not the target market. Do professionals actually identify with this stuff? Am I really that out of touch when I think that that much mousing around is CRAZY slow? And who switches back and forth from GUI editors to a terminal?

fizzbatter 11y ago
Slower for me, i use a laptop and trackpad. "Mouse" for me is very slow by comparison to keys.
noahlt 10y ago
Noah from Kite here. We're prototyping various keyboard shortcut schemes; we're excited to ship whatever we settle on.

zuck9 11y ago

This is similar to the Developer Assistant plugin for Visual Studio made by Microsoft: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/onecode/p/devassistant/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/onecode/p/devassistant/

giulianob 11y ago

This is really cool. It reminds me of OmniSharp which provides Intellisense to any IDE. It just runs as a background process listening on HTTP so adding intelligent autocompletion to a text editor is fairly easy. I like this approach a lot.

e0m 11y ago

This is amazing. Documentation pages that list methods alphabetically, or by some other random order, drive me crazy! Just being able to show me function calls by frequency and relevance would make Kite worth it. And there's so much more! Very excited about this.

irq11 11y ago

The title is a bit misleading. This only works for Python and OSX.

jayhpatel 11y ago
Jay from Kite here. We're on our way to supporting more languages and operating systems. Stay tuned! Pro tip: when you sign up on our website, you can also specify which language you use so we can keep you in the loop when we get to it!
- irq11 11y ago
  You folks have a big team, and have been working on this for two years now. Promising another language in the future doesn't mean the title is right.
  - eXpl0it3r 10y ago
    It can't be used right now anyways, so if it currently doesn't support your favorite language, what does it matter? Who knows what it will support once we get an alpha/beta/release version? Do you also tell the people that show you a prototype of their product that they are misleading you, because they claim to build an extended product out of that prototype?

ausjke 11y ago

I have long wished nodejs provides such helpful info, e.g. when I use the nodejs APIs I can get hints on the syntax and even some concise demo for usage, instead of opening a webpage and read online each time. Both python and PHP provide man pages for all their APIs etc, but no such thing for nodejs yet.

antiffan 11y ago

Super cool concept. One thought: when I'm using my laptop I have limited screen space. It would be awesome to be able to use Kite on my phone's screen, with my phone clipped to my laptop using something like this: https://tenonedesign.com/mountie.php https://tenonedesign.com/mountie.php

noonespecial 11y ago

So it's watching my bash terminal? Does it send my passwords on over to your servers when I ssh somewhere without keys?

alexflint 11y ago
No! If you can't see it (as visible chars) on your terminal then Kite is not seeing it.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  It sees all the visible chars? Not just what I type? So every time I ls all of my filenames and dirs get sent? That might be worse.
- discordance 10y ago
  This seems dubious. Does that mean key loggers can't see it?

saltycraig 11y ago

He should've put left_pad.py in a folder with an __init__.py to make it a proper package ;)

sulam 11y ago

So, this looks pretty damn awesome, and I want to try it out yesterday! Seems like a lot of people are worried about privacy, and I guess I understand that. But I want this for when I'm learning a new language, and I honestly don't much care what happens with that code. Also I think people are way too worried about their code. It's vanishingly rare that _the code_ is where the value in a business is. "But if I had Google's source code, I could run my own search engine and put them out of business!" Really? Could you? Because last I checked, Google has more engineers working on search than any other company on the planet. The stuff they do next week is probably going to improve their code more than what you would do by yourself for the entire year. And that's just the code, there's far more to search than algorithms.

0xffff2 11y ago
>Also I think people are way too worried about their code. I don't think anyone in this thread is worried about their code. The problem is that most of us work somewhere where we write code that isn't ours, and as such continued employment is contingent on us following the policies of the company. This generally include not sharing proprietary code.
- sulam 11y ago
  I don't know everyone in the thread, so I can't comment specifically to them. You're right that getting fired over using this thing would be suboptimal. :) I'm still eager to try it out!

mkagenius 11y ago

Does it search Stack overflow along?

chinathrow 11y ago

Nice tool, very nice demo video. Unusable since I won't let my code be indexed by a third party. Also unusable since I won't let a third party have access to my shell. Imagine having your bash history stored centrally - a prime target for LEO/security services/black hats/data mining. However - the code assistant is nice and I would love to have it running locally with a shared intelligent index - OSS based.

fareesh 11y ago

This looks great - can't wait to try it. Can I beg for an invite here?

pknerd 11y ago

Hopefully there will be a bit less traffic on Stackoverflow after using that. :-)

stcredzero 11y ago

No nerds were harmed in the making of this product. So no questions asked on IRC?

eridius 11y ago

This looks very slick. However, as others have said, uploading all source code to your servers is a pretty serious issue when working on anything other than open source projects. Also, when asking about editors while signing up, you listed "XCode". That's not the correct spelling, it should be "Xcode" (lowercase c). Also, you should allow for selecting multiple languages/editors. I selected Swift/Xcode because that's my day job, but I also use Swift/Vim in some cases, and I use Vim for languages other than Swift/Obj-C. In fact, I'm guessing Kite won't be nearly as useful for Swift/Xcode as it would be for other languages, because Xcode already provides a lot of this functionality (e.g. intelligent code completion and quick help for any API).

azinman2 11y ago
I wouldn't say Xcode is providing this... kite looks to be going much further in providing examples, alternatives, etc with a diff screen real estate philosophy. I welcome it.
- eridius 11y ago
  Yeah Xcode doesn't do everything Kite does, but it does enough that Kite isn't nearly so compelling there. And Xcode has the benefit of being 100% accurate with its code completion and quick help, whereas it remains to be seen how accurate Kite will be on that front.

nodesocket 11y ago

How does Kite protect against accidental API keys and passwords in source code (copy/paste) being shipped to them?

cmiller1 11y ago

Maybe I'm behind the curve, but I still use TextMate, is there any chance a plug-in is in the works for it?

clio 11y ago

At age 13, I completed my PhD at Google while having an internship at MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. By age 15 I won the Nobel Prize while working at my tenth SV startup. My name is Franklin, and I drink wine on the weekends.

mibrah 11y ago

TBH this has been such a long time coming. There has always been one of two extremes, logic based compiler-like tools that rely on a type system or static builtin library knowledge should have been replaced by fuzzy, internet integrated smart IDEs long ago. Part of me fears that too many programmers are long on tooling / GSD skills and short on software engineering and computer science fundamentals, which will become a worse and worse choice as Machine Learning aided boilerplate/busywork cutters become incorporated into IDEs and compilers.

werber 11y ago

For the early sign up it be cool if you could specify that you write in multiple languages and across multiple platforms to get invites as soon as possible. This looks like an amazing tool for a more hands off teaching style.

canistr 11y ago

Is it really a launch if very few people have access to it in a private beta? All this noise on Twitter/FB/HN/etc. doesn't help when we don't get a chance to play around with it. Just saying.

tomphoolery 11y ago

What's with the invite? Is this a service or something? What about this requires it to be proprietary and hosted elsewhere?

megacity 11y ago

I don't understand why this needs to store all the typed code on their server. Couldn't this data just be deleted once the lookup has run?

aeorgnoieang 10y ago
I imagine they're using all the code they get to update their 'what is popular' examples for all the subsequent lookups; or that's what they want to be able to do.
llamataboot 10y ago
Of course it could be. They want to monetize it somehow.

dangoor 11y ago

First of all, this is a cool looking tool. Useful, well-organized, easily-accessed information is always a wonderful thing. I think a model like Dash would work a lot better: Rather than opting in my code to be sent up to Kite's servers, I opt in to the packages I'm interested in having indexes for. In some cases, as with node, there are ways to see what packages my project depends on and then those bits of indexed data could be sent to me. My computer has a 512GB SSD. I could devote 10GB to indexes of libraries and my own code without blinking. The argument that it's too much data and therefore belongs in the cloud doesn't seem to hold up. Also, there are cases where I'm not online... this is one of the great things about Dash. I have fast access to library docs anywhere I happen to be.

deleted 11y ago
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albasha 11y ago
> My computer has a 512GB SSD. I could devote 10GB to indexes of libraries and my own code without blinking Mine has 128GB, less than 10GB free.
- Retr0spectrum 11y ago
  A 512GB ssd costs somewhere around £100. That puts the cost of 10GB at about £2.
  - albasha 11y ago
    Not really willing to change the SSD that came with my 2015 Mac.
  - ropiku 11y ago
    That's for 2.5" SATA SSDs. Some people have embedded PCIe drives. And on some macs they are soldered. Regardless, reserving 10GB for offline help isn't that bad.
    - 10y ago

notliketherest 11y ago

This is really cool, and I wish you luck. It has great potential for educational purposes as well! I'd like to download it and try it when it's launched for my personal projects; however, I won't be able to use this at work (no way I'd get buy in to upload our source code lol). It'd be great to see local indexing on the roadmap for the future.

lawl 11y ago

While I really like the idea, there's a couple of no gos here: * Only supports python (as of now, I know you said you'll do others) * No Linux support (yet) * Uploads code to your servers * Wants me to sign up to a crappy newsletter Really liked all the jokes in the video though. But I'm not convinced (yet), sorry. And there's the issue that's I'd want to test it before recommending buying it to my employer. But I don't do enterprise Java for fun, so there's completely different languages and libraries between the open source projects where I could upload the code (but don't want to because fuck everything cloud, also I won't pay for it, because I'm not making any money) and the for work projects (where I personally don't give a shit, but all the libraries/frameworks the we/the customer bought are proprietary). And maybe even the customer wouldn't like his code being uploaded somewhere, but they usually don't really care about the code.

odbol_ 11y ago

The juxtaposition between seeing this on the frontpage today, and the VIM 8.0 announcement on the frontpage yesterday, is hilarious.

jackcosgrove 11y ago

Many organizations already upload their source code to GitHub. I could get behind a tool like this that could scan GitHub repositories and build an on-premise index.

baby 11y ago

First, this is amazing. I want. Second, I do a lot of code readings that include not shareable code, I would imagine a lot of developers from a lot of companies would be in the same position. From https://kite.com/privacy/ https://kite.com/privacy/: * all the python files in your authorized directories are sent over the network * everything you type in these files are sent as well * all the terminal commands you are going to type (ouch ouch) > Q: How does Kite secure this network traffic? > A: As you would expect, all traffic goes over https. Yeah unfortunately that is not enough, a MITM can also use https. How do you authenticate the server? Do you have certificate pinning? > What information does Kite keep around on its servers? Pretty much all the info I previously talked about, that you are now worrying about, is kept there, in clear (correct me if I'm wrong). This is a big no-no at this point. > Many developers have already chosen to trust their code to services such as Github and Bitbucket Many developers also do not trust Github/Bitbucket with there code (and they should not) and do not store secrets there. And who would want github to have access all the terminal commands they type? This sounds like a nightmare. At this point I don't see why anyone would use that, if not in a VM, with extreme care on what commands are typed in the terminal and what code is used with Kite.

p01926 11y ago

I dream about a tool like this every time I need to look something up, which only happens about a hundred times every day. I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE. But reading the kite.com/privacy doc is absolutely gutting. They copy and keep all your code, permanently. That's fine for an open-source project, but it's a deal breaker for anything else. So thanks for the brilliant idea, but I'll wait for it to be implemented in a way compatible with my everyday workflow.

asimuvPR 10y ago

This is nice. Could we get a general description of what tech it is built on top of?

drcongo 10y ago

Could I suggest some kind of per directory .kiteignore file?

shade23 10y ago

While I realise that this could be helpful with editors.I do not see much use with IDEs.and when it comes to languages like Android/iOS/WebApps ?People tend to use IDEs.(I am not making my opinion the general opinion here). And when people google things,Documentations are often the last resort.You tend to google the exception or the specific condition and end up on StackOverflow where some one facing a similar problem solved it by using something which was mentioned somewhere deep in the documentation. Also if documentation and a few examples could work in most real world apps,then we really wouldn't need sites like Stack Overflow. Simple use case: the `man` and `help` command are useful when you have not been able to solve for your particular use case.Else I would still prefer doing a google search which would tell me how to scp a file with the syntax and placeholders instead of reading the documentation. The examples would help in this regard.But then again I am not sure how much.Normally documentation list pretty straight forward examples which any editor/IDE with intellisense (even Sublime provides a bit of prediction with plugins) ,should be able to provide. This also goes against the tendency of comparing.Normally while trying to solve a problem,I tend to open 2~3 similar 'answers' which help me drill down to my particular problem.Whereas here I would be restricted to only a single solution.I love the idea for the technology involved.But I am not completely convinced with the help that it could provide.

educar 10y ago

Great video :-) Loved the left pad joke and duly noted down your panama account information.

llamataboot 10y ago

Hmmm. Regarding one member of their team: "Prior to Kite, he was a tech lead at Homejoy, driving customer acquisition and retention." Not to spread tooooo much guilt by association, but didn't Homejoy just get roasted around here not too long ago for what thy did with the data on their servers? [1] Doesn't really make me feel the warm fuzzies for what they might do with all that data if they shut down. [1] https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e8d7a2dfb485#.97zeolsll https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e...

vinitagr 10y ago

Looks like an amazing tool. Have to use it before i can tell more. Showing the documentation and example is cool and all, a very useful feature would be the search and analysis of the error messages upon program compilation/run. Most likely from stackOverflow. This will make things so much easier. Reminds me of how2 https://github.com/santinic/how2 https://github.com/santinic/how2

mkelley82 10y ago

What about support for VS Code?

alexkavon 10y ago
Yes hopefully there will be integration for VS Code and Visual Studio. Though Microsoft already has a similar plugin, but this is purdier.
huuu 10y ago
You might like ReSharper from JetBrains. I think it's the best I ever used.

SanPilot 10y ago

> Left padding is so complicated that I've pulled it out into its own file, as you can see here. Am I just really ignorant, or is this satire?

rckrd 10y ago
Its satire directed towards the recent npm package fiasco (there was a 'leftpad' library by the original author who pulled his packages)[0]. The authors make a few other witty jokes in the video as well. [0]http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm
alexkavon 10y ago
Definitely satire.

heinrichf 10y ago

Who wants to build an open-source cross-platform clone ?

febed 10y ago

Great idea! But doesn't it work by intercepting keystrokes? What prevents Kite from reading keystrokes in other applications like a browser?

plaidturtle 10y ago

Loved the humor in the intro video :D

jiiam 10y ago

Ok, this convinced me. At first I was skeptical, but looking at how it works compared to existing methods that need a ton of configuration, I believe it is at least worth a try. More importantly, I believe it appeals to newcomers. We are getting into a world where learning the proper way of coding requires a lot more than the famous 10.000 hours, mostly because there are hundreds of standards. This tool might become a much nicer introduction for newbies, compared to digging through pages of documentations in search for the one example that satisfy your use-case (I'm talking to you, Python requests).

sandman83 10y ago

awesome. intellisense on steroids.

ElijahLynn 10y ago

Very interesting. But closed. Not open.

slantaclaus 10y ago

I hope it supports TextMate...