17 ms·

Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

553 points by adamsmith 10y ago

fuzzythinker 10y ago
Is support of 10.9.x (Mavericks) on the roadmap?
xxcode 10y ago
Whats wrong with a Google search?
adamsmith 10y ago
Adam from Kite here. Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement around the launch today. We're excited to be opening up Kite for everyone to download today. When we launched Kite here on hackernews almost a year ago we were blown away by the enthusiasm for our smart copilot vision. Over 65,000 of you signed up for Kite in the first 72 hours, and over the past year we've been working with many of you to deliver that vision. It's taken a momentous effort, but today we're ready to take off the wrapping paper and open up Kite to the world. Here's what we've been working on: * Deep editor integrations: to make Kite better for smaller screens and more integrated into the coding workflow. You no longer have to dedicate a sidebar of your screen to Kite; instead, recommendations from Kite replace your editor’s autocompletions and hover results. * Fine-grained privacy controls modeled after the .gitignore file format means that you can selectively and precisely decide which files and folders Kite indexes. * Next generation type inference engine that uses both static analysis and statistical inference over Github. Kite beats PyCharm and Jedi by 32% on a typical Django project, offering more completions when you need them. * Ranked completions which put the most relevant completions at the top of the autocomplete box using techniques traditionally used in web search. * Kite for Windows. (And Linux in testing!) Check it out at kite.com.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Does Kite still send all your code to Kite servers as you type? I remember that being an issue the last time someone talked about Kite on HN. I'm find with an editor or sidekick that can search stack overflow or duckduckgo or google quickly with a hotkey-- maybe keep snippets you can tag and easily reference-- but sending all my code as I type to a web service is something I'm not willing to do and something most companies won't allow.
  - StyloBill 10y ago
    I think the answer to your question is : "* Fine-grained privacy controls modeled after the .gitignore file format means that you can selectively and precisely decide which files and folders Kite indexes."
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      Unfortunately, that means that a really simple app where a developer hardcoded something like an API key, and didn't put it in a separate file they told Kite to ignore, will get uploaded. Any system that relies on people following best practices is doomed in the real world :(
      - Cyph0n 10y ago
        You mean like Git?
        Karunamon 10y ago
        Git isn't generally configured to automatically upload your files as you type or as files are saved. There are things like GitFS, but I imagine those aren't part of an average developer's workflow.
        Cyph0n 10y ago
        My point is that an inexperienced Git user can push their secrets to Github for example, just like a Kite user who doesn't specify a .kiteignore.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        My point is that it's a lot easier to happen accidentally when the upload happens automatically and without intervention. With git, you directly specify what files you're committing (with the .gitignore as an additional safety net) and when that commit happens. It's all manual. If I'm testing an app and I want to hard code an API key for testing, and I'm using Github, it's not a problem. I have to explicitly commit that file. Now, I have to both remember that Kite uploads everything, and avoid using that workflow at all, and use the .kiteignore thing (which is another random dotfile in my repo, great).
- curiousgal 10y ago
  > And Linux in testing! Awesome!
- m_fayer 10y ago
  This looks truly useful and innovative, well done! Two things come to mind, apologies if they're already addressed: The sidebar jumping around in the corner of my eye sounds really distracting, I wonder if there's some way to manually tell it to "update" or some other UX trick to ameliorate that, because the concept is great. I work in the healthcare sector, and I hope you guys do or will have the reams of datasec declarations and certifications needed for this to be usable in such a regulated context.
  - adamsmith 10y ago
    Hi there! We've done two things to address the sidebar motion issue: 1) We've improved the sidebar's motion with an updated layout that creates fewer visual changes, and 2) We've been building deeper integration into the editors, with new UX around completions and looking things up. Check out the new demo video on the homepage—we think you'll like it! : ) Regarding datasec, unfortunately we haven't gotten to that level of security certifications yet, but we hope to get there soon!
- jcwayne 10y ago
  This would be a winner if the indexing were done locally and only usage data regarding public packages were sent to kite.com
- mehaveaccount 10y ago
  My first time hearing this. I would love to drop some coin if it improves my life, and I think a service like Kite was just waiting for someone to make it happen. I'll test out your demo version today to see if it helps
- Bedon292 10y ago
  How intertwined is the completion and the indexing? Could I .kiteignore * and then still use the functionality for completion and documentation on public code? Would it just send API calls based on the functions I am calling or something like that? I cannot send my code to you, nor will I be able to convince my company to pay for an enterprise version. I would pay for a personal version that has some sort of controls in place though. Can you not have it just cache locally based on the requirements.txt or the import lines at the top of the file? Then all you know is what I am importing, and I would be fine with that. Anything more, and sorry, can't do it.
- devy 10y ago
  How do I kill "com.kite.KiteHelper" from memory? It keeps reviving.
- heroprotagonist 10y ago
  This is tempting, particularly when learning new libraries, but it seems like it could be resolved with an offline database at some point instead of a hosted cloud service. This would probably improve performance a bit (in terms of responsiveness, rather than accuracy). I can see where you might want to index all of my code to add to your store of information about how frequently various functions are used, because "more is better" in terms of training data, but there are plenty of open-source projects that could be polled instead. For my own code, why not simply analyze my existing projects on my own machine without sending it elsewhere? It's pretty laughable that when one clicks through to the security page, the very first thing beyond the heading of "Security. Built in." is "Kite is Cloud Powered." as though that were a feature instead of a liability. While directory whitelisting and a .kiteignore seem like decent ways to prevent code from leaking, it's only one small bug away from disclosing a company's proprietary secret sauce to unknowns entities.
- cdnsteve 10y ago
  Very nice editor add-on. Looking forward to the Enterprise info as more becomes available.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  I know this is your baby and all, but how high was your team (high as a kite?) when they thought sending every line of code to your server was a good idea? Seriously, could just send the object type being "autocompleted"along with the other object types in the same file and gotten better results without the privacy backlash.
  - ako 10y ago
    Is it really that much worse than having code on a private GitHub repository or pushing Python code to a paas platform like pivotal?
    - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
      True, but Github and a PaaS platform tell you that your data is leaving your computer. It isn't something that happens in the background from a simple autocomplete application. The other thing is that a proper 12-factor app separates secrets and keys into environment variables that are not committed to Github or your PaaS. They are added after a deployment which this "product" just scoops up. For reference, here's what a AWS key being leaked on Github leads to (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/06/dev_blunder_shows_github_crawling_with_keyslurping_bots/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/06/dev_blunder_shows_g...). Now, imagine that project that is running in production having to be brought offline because this company leaks thousands of AWS keys that were used in development. It's dangerous, sloppy and stupid, three things I generally try not to mix.
- deleted 10y ago
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tweakz 10y ago
More information here: https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/28/kite-a-cloud-powered-developer-environment-takes-flight-on-windows-and-mac/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/28/kite-a-cloud-powered-deve...
falsedan 10y ago
> Your connection is not secure SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER
- falsedan 10y ago
  Ah, it's being blocked by work's OpenDNS malware detection…
  - falsedan 10y ago
    https://domain.opendns.com/kite.com https://domain.opendns.com/kite.com doesn't show any unusual categories, we might be pulling security blacklists from another source.
    - falsedan 10y ago
      Yeah, we special-cased it because we're not comfortable with company IP being shipped offsite and potentially shared with other programmers.
      - brianorwhatever 10y ago
        sounds like someone at your work is doing their job well
    - bpicolo 10y ago
      My OpenDNS is also unhappy about it, getting all sorts of SSL cert issues.
- deleted 10y ago
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- inputcoffee 10y ago
  I had a similar error, but when I looked into it it seems that the digital certificate was revoked (by issuer). I suspect others will have this issue. (On my windows 10 machine)
chinathrow 10y ago
Congrats on the launch. Did you address the issue which came up multiple times last time when this was on HN about cloud indexed code by default?
ayuvar 10y ago
The built-in examples for method use are a really cool feature. I hate having to jump to MSDN, etc just to find an example snippet when the argument comments are unclear.
- jtraffic 10y ago
  Yeah, I love the examples too. Where do they come from? I think allowing users to submit code examples could dramatically increase the value. Maybe even microservices. The ideal (and perhaps impossible) version would look at my code structure and suggest replacements for components from people who are better programmers than I am.
pkrefta 10y ago
Are there any plans to support Vim/Neovim ?
- taraku 10y ago
  Tarak from Kite here. Kite already supports vim/neovim on macOS with the Kite Sidebar!
  - soperj 10y ago
    And coming to linux soon?
  - spditner 10y ago
    Seems to only hook MacVim and it's companion console version, but not the system vim. Is there a .vimrc setting to ensure it's always activated?
js8 10y ago
I wish I had something like that for Haskell.. it could work by expected return type.
- m-j-fox 10y ago
  Haskell offers unreasonably featureful tooling like hoogle and codex but at the same time lacks basic editor integrations even in emacs which is supposed to be the premiere editor. Getting a good setup is something I can't do twice. What fork of ghcimod do I need this week and how many CPUs will she be pegging?
jentulman 10y ago
Has your cache/proxy fallen over? I'm getting a 404 for the base domain 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 759C55C7EA94F7D8 HostId: 2i2HH8A3vp5KFvhHhHeoQ+6AiFL/kjd5iByJy6Ouo/pbKwE2xaKP8Es4SU3//1/P7M/5KWJXQv8=
- alexflint 10y ago
  Thanks - we're investigating. Seems to be working in most places but there may be an edge node out of line.
  - lurker456 10y ago
    same here, from Sweden 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 7928D2D3EE5313F6 HostId: 2iAqS6E1PciR/++frE0wVXo/jlBhK24kopo93WRvVieuepmCctk1v+m+yOAIZZz1q5qIA6HVH9w=
  - ricardobeat 10y ago
    Getting the same here
  - dimonomid 10y ago
    same here, from Bulgaria.
deleted 10y ago
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ezekg 10y ago
Looks awesome. Congrats on the launch! I'd pay for a Ruby/Rails version of this.
- alexflint 10y ago
  Great to hear - we'll be there soon :)
rohit33 10y ago
Curious to try Kite, I started to integrate Kite plugin into PyCharm until I saw they keep our code in the cloud which enables Kite do what it does. I'm not sure how many of them would be ok with their code being stored in a private cloud!
- badthingfactory 10y ago
  My largest concern is how frequently is my code sent to the cloud? Sometimes when building integrations, I hard code private keys just to get things working and then pull them out into config files that aren't checked into source control. Not knowing where that key might have gone would bother me.
  - alexflint 10y ago
    One of the big things we've worked on over the past few months is giving users fine grained control of which files are indexed by kite: - Kite only indexes directories that you have explicitly enabled - You can create a .kiteignore file (same semantics as .gitignore) to exclude specific files / patterns.
    - badthingfactory 10y ago
      That clarifies things. Thanks!
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      Do you have a sanitizer that detects stuff that looks like crypto keys and censors it before upload? Offhand, sounds like it would be pretty easy to compute just using an appropriate entropy measure.
    - askvictor 10y ago
      It would probably make sense to default to using .gitignore if a .kiteignore hasn't been specified; likely the same things that you'd want hidden.
    - deleted 10y ago
stevemk14ebr 10y ago
Do C and C++ and ill pay
inputcoffee 10y ago
Where are the Instructions? okay, so I am excited about this, don't mind some code in the cloud, but I am having trouble with a quick start. Downloaded it, had trouble launching it (expired certificate). Once I did launch it there are no instructions. I went into the tray and went to settings. It was trying to map my WHOLE USER FOLDER. I turned that off, and whitelisted a smaller folder for it to use. Set up a small test python file. Opened up a sublime file. Can you include some instructions about how Kite is supposed to integrate with anything? I see this cool video but it is not obvious how I am supposed to get it to work for myself.
- adamsmith 10y ago
  Hi inputcoffee, it sounds like you may have not been shown the install flow. Maybe try uninstalling Kite through the Control Panel, redownloading and installing again. (We had an Authenticode certificate issue that is now fixed.) If you don't see the Kite onboarding flow, email me at adam@kite.com and we'll figure out what's going on : ) Thanks for trying Kite. Would love you get you up and running!
  - inputcoffee 10y ago
    That worked. It is actually pretty easy once is works. Thanks.
CopyZero 10y ago
This looks great. Any plans to support notepad++?
Philipp__ 10y ago
Looks really cool. Anyone tried to see how it integrates with Emacs?
atarian 10y ago
How do I uninstall Kite on OSX? It seems you guys keep a Kite Helper and Kite Engine process up that's impossible to quit out of and prevents me from deleting the app.
- alexflint 10y ago
  Sorry about this - it's embarrassing. We've been snowed under getting Kite ready for launch and didn't want to touch the update mechanism right before launch. We _will_ get this fixed ASAP. In the mean time, check out http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite
  - atarian 10y ago
    Thank you for adding the instructions. I wanted to use Kite until I realized I had to upload my code. I think you guys need to mention that in your landing page's copy.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - jchung 10y ago
    I disagree with your decision on what feature set was necessary to be launch ready. Not to put too fine a point on it but I think it's worth saying out loud that software that users can't quit out of is not ready for launch, especially if your docs clearly state that quitting the app is required for uninstallation.
  - Msurrow 10y ago
    Yeah, that doesn't work for uninstalling. The helper and engine keeps restarting when you quit them in step 2. rm -rf /Applications/Kite.app then kill the engine and helper Jesus, what a nice way to piss people off: 1. upload all code to cloud. 2. be hard to get rid off.
    - vhold 10y ago
      Yeah I immediately tried to uninstall it after seeing it required a login and had no preview functionality, and then immediately ran into the persistent process problem. Any application that puts a service like that on my system without my consent is blacklisted for life to be honest, there's no excuse for something like that. Later finding out it .. uploads your code to them.. it's really an insane thing, I think it's such a huge invasion of your machine and your privacy it should have been removed from the HN front page unless those facts were put immediate front and center.
li4ick 10y ago
No GNU/Linux support? Well, remind me when you do.
- rwallace 10y ago
  You can ask that on their website: enter your email address along with your operating system, language and editor, and it'll let you know when support for that combination is added.
welder 10y ago
Useful HN Discussion from the original 1.0 launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497111
madisonmay 10y ago
How close are you to a linux release?
- alexflint 10y ago
  Really, absurdly, ridiculously close. Like so close we almost delayed launch so that we could get it in.
citruspi 10y ago
Why are you encrypting my password (as opposed to hashing it)[0]? [0]: http://i.imgur.com/59VOotU.png http://i.imgur.com/59VOotU.png
- alexflint 10y ago
  Oops! That message is a remnant of the distant past and does not correspond in any way to what is actually happening under the hood.
  - jchung 10y ago
    In that case, what exactly is happening under the hood?
    - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
      Also, 55 character limit? What the fuck did I type in my Delorean this morning?
      - axonic 10y ago
        nice and soft -.o
zeptomu 10y ago
Maybe a little bit off-topic and controversial, but in my opinion auto-complete is overrated. Doing software development is mostly reading code and documentation. Obviously one also writes code and for sure one can't memorize every function or package name, but searching for it isn't that much of a bottleneck? Some time ago I wrote Java using Eclipse (which had/has reasonable auto-complete), but when I switched to different languages, I also switched my IDE and mostly use plain text editors these days. There are auto-completion tools for text editors, but I just never invest the time to activate or configure them and AFAIK there aren't completion tools which work well across different languages. Maybe I revisit them at some point, but at the moment I do not really miss auto-completion.
- inputcoffee 10y ago
  I feel the opposite. I think, in the future, ideally, you will be able to do a programming interview, using a tool like kite, in a language you don't know and feel comfortable. So when I am learning a new language, I don't want to have to look up if the length of a vector is len(), length(), .len, .len(), .length() and so on. In fact, I don't want to do this for languages that I do "know".
  - zeptomu 10y ago
    But what if it's called "size"?
    - foota 10y ago
      Maybe a synonym aware documentation searching autocomplete?
    - klibertp 10y ago
      It works like this: aCollection.<TAB> list of all the method on given collection pops up. If it's short, just skim it and choose something which appropriate. If it's long: aCollection.l<TAB> check if there's something similar to length/len, use it, otherwise: aCollection.l<BACKSPACE>c<TAB> check if there's something similar to count then use it, if not: aCollection.l<BACKSPACE>s<TAB> check if there's something similar to size and use it. Finally, if all the guesses failed, defer to documentation or google. Basically, (semantic) auto-complete is an inline quick-search facility for docs. Very, very useful if you know how to use it effectively.
bcherny 10y ago
Awesome work! Any chance you can add TypeScript to the "Vote for a Language" menu?
hasenj 10y ago
In my professional job I work with code that is private and copy righted by the company that's employing me and praying my salary, not to mention sometimes I edit files that contain sensitive or critical information like passwords and secret encryption/decryption keys. Anything that sends all my code to the cloud is automatically disqualified. EDIT: thanks for the downvote btw.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  So this product isn't for you. That's okay! It doesn't need to be for everyone.
- pikzen 10y ago
  That is a valid concern, and anyone downvoting this is so far down the hype machine that there's no saving them anymore. Kite is a breach of privacy for 80% of professional software developers that work on a private codebase. You are sending your code directly to a third party, without even any ways for you to prevent that. At least asking on SO you can change your code so it isn't 100% obvious what you're doing. The fact that this remote upload is mentioned nowhere on the landing page and can only be inferred from the Kite Enterprise very short description is a bit worrying. However, starting a few Python projects myself soon, this looks like a great extension. I suppose the suggestion for VS Code has been made dozens of times already though.
vitiral 10y ago
Great, now uncle Sam knows everything I'm thinking while I program. No thanks, I'd like to have SOME privacy. What I punch into my editor shouldn't be public until I git push.
alexnewman 10y ago
Seems down
turtlebits 10y ago
The documentation font for me is way too small, any way to make it bigger? You can see my IDE font size on the left. http://imgur.com/a/4B2GB http://imgur.com/a/4B2GB
tedmiston 10y ago
Congrats on the launch! As any early beta user on public code, I was really impressed by Kite and my only concern was ability to use it on private codebases ie, work code. Glad to see that you've addressed that. Does the Sublime integration support packages installed in the current virtual environment (that might not be publicly available)? Aside: The pricing page is broken on iOS.
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bartkappenburg 10y ago
Just an honest (legal) concern: Is stack overflow ok with having their answers inside an IDE? This decreases the number of pageviews on SO for each installed client. Is that something you guys checked?
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Of course nobody cares about legality. Caring about it is not The Start-up Way. Bonus again if you get a major snippet from a third party library with an incompatible license.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  StackOverflow comments are Creative Commons, with the code licensed under MIT: http://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing http://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-license-the-mit-this-time-with-attribution-required/272960 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-l... Both are attribution-required.
saikouzen 10y ago
just a blank page for me: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_fqMwJbAXzURzRTWlNhN25INWc https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_fqMwJbAXzURzRTWlNhN25INW...
AstralStorm 10y ago
In the meantime, get your code grabbed by major companies writing search engines. Good luck with privacy. Bonus points for accidental license violations.
otto_ortega 10y ago
I hope they add support for Php7 soon. Seems like a very useful add-on.
tekklloneer 10y ago
I straight up cannot use Kite. The "code-to-cloud" functionality means that I cannot use it at work. I would love to use it, but it's a non-starter.
- adamsmith 10y ago
  We really wanted to knock out the core functionality of Kite for Python, and are now exploring on prem deployments of Kite. If this is an important feature for you we'd love to chat. (I'm adam@kite.com.)
  - tekklloneer 10y ago
    Yeah, I'd love to try it. However, I'm at work and that's where I would be trying it - and I can't. Aside from intellectual policy problems, in large codebases mistakes happen, including api keys being committed and pushed. You see it even in open source projects, and tools like gitrob[1] exist to exploit that. You can see how both of those example issues are problematic, if even a snapshot of your codebase is being pushed off-site. I think this is a crucially important feature for any large enterprise that has a codebase that is a significant effort of R&D resources. Don't get me wrong, there are cloud services like github being used by medium to large shops, but the missing visibility into those decisions is that those choices are often regularly heavily vetted by security, legal, and engineering resources. 1 https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob
    - tekklloneer 10y ago
      tldr ill get in trouble if i use kite at work :(
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  check out dash docs + alfred integration for offline code documentation search at your fingertips
jMyles 10y ago
Does the cloud connectivity requirement mean that kite cannot be used offline?
gigatexal 10y ago
Been waiting for this! Stoked to try it out.
gigatexal 10y ago
The website isn't intuitive on mobile. Do you have to do something special to get the Java client?
progval 10y ago
Could you make your website not display a blank page if the browser has Javascript disabled? The content does not seem dynamic, so a simple HTML page should work.
- andreashansen 10y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why do you have JavaScript disabled?
  - somecallitblues 10y ago
    Im interested in this too. Why?
  - mehaveaccount 10y ago
    Security
    - xutopia 10y ago
      How is having Javascript enabled less secure?
      - ianhowson 10y ago
        Greater attack surface.
        axonic 10y ago
        Yeah, like doors or Windows in your home. Take it however you like.
        progval 10y ago
        A home without doors cannot be used. A browser without Javascript can be.
  - 10y ago
Sir_Substance 10y ago
Interesting project. If I look at one of your code examples/snippets, realize that's exactly what I need and copy it verbatim, where does that leave me, legally?
- alexflint 10y ago
  Great point. We need to address this. Right now the examples are written and owned by us (Kite), so you would technically be in uncertain legal territory (depending on whether fair use was applied per-example or per-page). We will change this to make it crystal clear that copying examples is allowed.
  - Sir_Substance 10y ago
    Sounds good to me!
nikolay 10y ago
The sidebar is way too obtrusive!
languagehacker 10y ago
I just tried Kite on my Mac, and I was really not pleased with it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is questionable at best when the code you're working on isn't necessarily your own. Having Kite running in the background without a way to disable or uninstall it feels like nothing short of malware. The lack of documentation for how to uninstall Kite from your machine or how to remove your data from their cloud is also pretty worrisome.
- stwe 10y ago
  The developers of Kite also replaced the functionality of a popular python autocomplete Atom extension from using jedi to Kite without properly warning the users: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    The CEO's response in that thread is very clear that they added an additional option to use Kite, and did not make Kite the default or replace the default.
    - stwe 10y ago
      I was a happy user of the python autocomplete package with Jedi for some time. Starting in November 2016 they introduced kite-specific code, shipping kite-installer as a dependency and also added tracking of your autocompletion behaviour (I suspect this is where they get their Kite vs. Jedi performance numbers from). Only in February 2017 I noticed that the whole package had changed right under me because of an error traceback window caused by their metrics collection going wrong. I looked at the package settings and IIRC there was a checkmark set for the "Use Kite" option which I'm pretty sure I did not set myself. The telemetry collection alone is a deal breaker for me. But I also don't like the sneaky way they practically took over the package without clear notice and consent. The package README still makes no mention of Kite and the package is running under the innocently looking 'autocomplete-python' GitHub org instead of their 'kiteco' org. To me it's a very fishy 'growth hacking' strategy.
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sidmitra 10y ago
The Linux version isn't available still. Is it just on HN or are there very few people now who use Linux as their main dev machine? With some of the build quality of the new Dell Machines I would have assumed any dev tool would be Linux first, since almost everyone is using some form of 'nix on the servers. I've never had much trouble installing the latest Ubuntu on any of XPS series(except the 'suspend' feature is weird). EDIT: nvm i see from another comment that the Linux version is in testing. But still weird to see Mac devs outnumber Linux ones(or maybe they're just a vocal minority :-) )
michaelmior 10y ago
> it has twice the documentation coverage of any other tool. Curious how they could possibly quantify that.
Scaevolus 10y ago
Does this have anything to do with Kythe, "a pluggable, (mostly) language-agnostic ecosystem for building tools that work with code"? https://kythe.io/ https://kythe.io/
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arihant 10y ago
Since this program uploads code to the cloud, it would be worthy to clarify if it cleans out strings before upload or not. Because if it does not, it is a serious concern as it puts secret keys in code in awful risk. They also run a background process that needs to be manually killed to be able to uninstall. It feels like a quarantine. This is an editor plugin, is there really no simpler way to provide uninstall capability?
- adamsmith 10y ago
  To clarify, on Windows the uninstaller is just one step: double click Kite from the Programs & Features section of Control panel. Unfortunately on Mac you have to quit Kite before it can be dragged to the trash. You can do that from the menubar icon or by killing "Kite Engine". (You don't need to quit Kite Helper to drag to the Trash.) See instructions here http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite. We'll be improving this on Mac shortly.
  - sebleon 10y ago
    Welp - after reading through these comments, seems like privacy and code upload are huge concerns. Might be worth it for you guys to get ahead of this, and address these issues explicitly on the home page and during installation. It will lower short-term usage & install numbers, but probably won't hurt long-term retention and word of mouth sharing.
    - adamsmith 10y ago
      Thanks, we appreciate the constructive feedback! We've worked really hard to make sure we're clearly communicating what's happening (transparency), and adding fine grained controls. We have a very clear step during the install flow that talks about how Kite works, and we will prompt for whitelisting within each of the editor plugins that can work without the sidebar (Atom, ST3, PyCharm). We also have a security page (https://kite.com/security https://kite.com/security) that points to our various resources related to this, including more details about our control mechanisms—including .kiteignore—and how we think about security (our four principles). We also know that some companies need on-premise Kite to make this work. We're exploring that now with customers, and would love to chat with you if it's something you need. (https://kite.com/enterprise https://kite.com/enterprise) I know none of these are silver bullets. Thanks for your comment as we work with users to figure out how to make this work. We hope you'll give Kite a spin when you can—we think it's pretty transformative—and we hope to be able to address all of your concerns soon! : )
invokesus 10y ago
Not working behind a http-proxy. Dealbreaker for me.
devy 10y ago
Just installed it but realized that our code cannot be shared to the cloud with a 3rd party before I open it. So I am trying to delete/uninstall Kite. Been wrestling with com.kite.KiteHelper for the last half an hour and still couldn't get it off my laptop memory. Tried "killall", "kill -9" and force quit from Activity Monitor. It kept reviving. And yes, I've check out the help site and this article in particular, didn't help: http://help.kite.com/article/22-how-do-i-quit-kite http://help.kite.com/article/22-how-do-i-quit-kite Already disliking this software...
jd20 10y ago
On the pages for plugins (like Atom, Sublime, etc...) you might want a simple "how to install". Took me several minutes of confusion, to realize I should open up Atom and search for Kite from there. I kept thinking there should be a download link for the plugins, before remembering that's not how editor plugins get installed these days :)
nichochar 10y ago
I appreciate people trying to build "cool" products, but the downsides of this are so high that people should heavily consider never using it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is a massive liability. To top this, the people interested in "something magical that codes for me" are not the good developers, their users are very most likely beginners, bootcamp coders, junior engineers, etc... I think they're abusing trust through obscurity, people have no idea that their code is being uploaded. Making this the default for a very common python-autocomplete in atom is even worse... see this: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...
- azeirah 10y ago
  > the people interested in "something magical that codes for me" are not the good developers No matter how much I code, I'll always have to look at documentation. This is just faster documentation, I really don't see the problem from that perspective.
hollander 10y ago
Little Flocker and Little Snitch nightmare, this is.
theSoenke 10y ago
This seems really great on the first look, but uploading the code is a real issue. It is basically a keylogger
jnordwick 10y ago
I love the ideas in the search, and would definitely buy, except... I work in finance, and source code in the cloud could get me some prison time.
slang800 10y ago
Has anyone tried building something like this, but doing the analysis locally and just pulling from a documentation repository like Dash? I don't like the idea of uploading my code to their server, or using a proprietary tool, but I really want documentation lookups in my editor.
simplehuman 10y ago
Why so much concern about the code ? GitHub, Travis all do the same...
- deleted 10y ago
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jameside 10y ago
I'd be interested in trying Kite for JavaScript when it's ready. Most of my company's code base is open source and we do a lot of open source work so Kite could be a nice fit one day. Trying out Kite on our actual code base for a week would be a real litmus test for me. We're comfortable with sending our closed-source code to GitHub and our secrets to Google Cloud and AWS so I can see a path towards being more comfortable with uploading code to Kite as well. Some guarantees around privacy and the ability to delete our code and derived data could help assuage concerns. In the meantime, perhaps you could highlight that the code uploading is opt-in on a per-file or per-directory basis (though one issue with this is that our open-sourcing system allows for private subdirectories within public parent directories and we'd want finer control)? I'd feel good about having clarity around what's uploaded and what's kept local. In any case this seems really cool for open-source projects to start with. I'd definitely give the JavaScript version a try. And do you think you could add a VS Code extension?
axonic 10y ago
Dear Kite, I really love this idea, but hell no I'm not using it yet. Here's why... I'll cut to the point here, so please forgive the bluntness as I mean no insult or accusation, just honest criticism, and I'm gonna try to cover a lot in as small a space as possible. There's not even a mention on kite.com about how data is handled that I can find anywhere. What is the method of transport? What stands between skids and my code? The server my data goes to, is it shared VPS hardware waiting to get pwned by your neighbor, xtremecrackz.zyx or is it on private servers guarded by a three headed puppy named Κέρβερος, 13 ninja, and biometric security? Does the page even mention this is a cloud service somewhere? I see support for VS Code, but not MSVS proper, emacs but not specifically GNU/Linux yet; Mac support but not Linux in spite of at least $4M USD in seed and 3 years of development (source: crunchbase [1])? The Windows download page gives instructions for bypassing SmartScreen warnings meaning your code signing certificate has no reputation with Microsoft yet if I understand correctly. Frankly, I didn't think "Adam Smith" was even a real person until I checked it out. LOL, sorry bro but it sounds kinda generic to someone skeptical I guess. Maybe you assume trust since you travel in the circles you do, but we nutjobs like stuff in writing, and trust assumptions without verification are bad practice anyhow -.- (on trust) Your investor who may or may not provide the same or similar "Kite" software discussed in GCHQ leaks as a "correlates-anything" solution, Palantir Technologies, has been standing in the suspiciously shadowy center of a maelstrom in some circles. I like them supporting our warfighting - but not working against the people of the United States, or anyone's civilians for that matter, however that's an argument for the agencies they contracted with. I've watched my brothers bleed out defending the rights their software has helped undermine, I'm not sure how to feel about them at all right now. Do I want to give my code to their creepy software? No, not really, since I'd have to consider that if they got a contract they might, without even knowing the end use, build software to guide Terminators to hunt down and kill civilians who write bad code or wear plaid socks. Seriously though: eyebrow raised. (advice) I would add more clear information about how this all works. A link to security answers should come up before the footer IMO, given the nature of this product. Going out of my way to look for it, I guess it seems like security was an afterthought. I can appreciate your blog post about security [2] and the main security page which links to that article (merge these?), but they fail to answer almost all of my questions. They imply that the service isn't really ready for the spotlight, but do not explicitly say anywhere to safeguard sensitive stuff or not to trust everything just yet, but it seems softly implied to me. (bigFoilHat) This might sound far out to some, feel free to ignore or laugh, but if I were an evil puppet master, I'd have my cybersecurity and intelligence contractor who provides access to mission critical software or monetary capital for a startup attempt to leverage this relationship to gain information about code in the wild and specific targets' code using this service, perhaps to have software look for opportunities to steal parts of keys, suggest code changes to enable exploitation, forward copies of code from persons of interest to investigators. I might ask them to approach them as patriots in the interest of the GWOT and all things decent, to tacitly and deniably or perhaps even expressly cooperate with legally and morally grey-area surveillance operations. Perhaps if there is no cooperation or just to keep it quiet, I might suggest they infiltrate Kite.com and gain the ability to intercept data clandestinely by using their trust and rapport with company leadership. "Plz send all code to spies and disable security stuffz kthxbai" I can weaken my own PRNGs and send copies of my code for spooks to analyze by myself without assistance thanks. Again, I'm attempting to honestly characterize how it makes me feel, just sayin'. I simply have no way to even fool myself into thinking I can know what goes on with my data after it leaves my PC. How do I even build rules for my firewalls? What are the parent processes which need communication, on which ports, using what protocols? Which servers will it upload to? Can we blacklist certain destinations by region or other attributes? I think you need a more robust explanation on the site before us crazy people are satisfied. (bigFoilHat Q) HN: what say you, am I just being paranoid here in thinking that users' analyzed code may end up being displayed on an alphabet soup agency wiki somewhere along with download links for tools to suprisebuttsecks us being passed out to every malware hoarding contractor who accidentally skated past the SF-86? Maybe I'm just having a bad bout of Stallman Syndrome. One might argue "99.99% of users' code will be useless fluff and bizcruft, who cares if they copy my der.py code?" but finding that 0.01% relevant signal in the noise is exactly what Palantir does for customers, isn't it? So how can I flippantly dismiss the notion? (Q) Do you sell, gift, trade, share, or otherwise disclose or make available knowingly any information about users' personal data or source code, even if anonymized or generalized in reports and detached from identifying information, to other parties? Can/will/do these parties include your investors? Does Palantir Technologies store, use, or have access to at any time, our source code or any information about it or ourselves? That said, it sounds cool as phrack and I would love to see this in many languages and editors, but only if it can be trusted somehow. I'll be watching and investigating, thanks for sharing this on HN, -Ax [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite-com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite-com/ [2] https://kite.com/blog/thoughts-on-security https://kite.com/blog/thoughts-on-security Please correct anything I am mistaken about, I admit I could be completely off the mark here.
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karsinkk 10y ago
I just spent an awful amount of time trying to uninstall Kite. There were two background processes: Kite Helper and Kite Engine Which showed up on Activity Monitor,and I could never get them to quit, each time I killed a process with the PID, a zombie would spawn up with a different PID. Eventually I killed them both by removing the Kite packages from the Cache in library, emptying the trash and then restarting my machine.Phew! Not to mention the slow autocomplete suggestions in Sublime Text 3. I think I'll just stick with my old setup.
partycoder 10y ago
Dash (Mac OS X), Velocity (Windows) and Zeal (Windows/Linux) do something similar. There are plugins for various editors.
partycoder 10y ago
This program uploads your code to a central server. Please flag this submission.
plazma 10y ago
This makes me learn python. Any plans for javascript and Vim plugin?
shultays 10y ago
Most Popular Articles and the first one How do I uninstall Kite? I guess I will pass
nuggien 10y ago
not sure if this has been thought of before but why don't you just have kite cloud index open source and public code, and then have a separate local index for the user's project code. That way, autocompletes/help/doc searches first the user's project index (local), and then search the kite cloud for public/opensource code index.
replete 10y ago
Looks awesome but there is no way in hell I'm uploading my code to your cloud. Instantly violates NDAs.
nikhil13 10y ago
I have been using it on sublime. After adding kite is has started lagging, a lot. And that's when I have quite good configuration in my laptop. Hope you look into it
bryanapperson 10y ago
This would be nice... however it does not work unless you upload your code. Code upload should be optional and only for enhanced functionality within your code base.
craigds 10y ago
I'd love to try this out, it looks amazing. But it's just not acceptable to send all the code to the cloud. I'd love to use a self-hosted version though.
AdamTheAnalyst 10y ago
Upload all my code to your cloud first.... erm, hell no - uninstalled. Enterprise wont use this at all, way to big of a risk.
peternicky 10y ago
What is the timeline for rolling out JavaScript support?

553 points by adamsmith 10y ago

fuzzythinker 10y ago

Is support of 10.9.x (Mavericks) on the roadmap?

xxcode 10y ago

Whats wrong with a Google search?

adamsmith 10y ago

Adam from Kite here. Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement around the launch today. We're excited to be opening up Kite for everyone to download today. When we launched Kite here on hackernews almost a year ago we were blown away by the enthusiasm for our smart copilot vision. Over 65,000 of you signed up for Kite in the first 72 hours, and over the past year we've been working with many of you to deliver that vision. It's taken a momentous effort, but today we're ready to take off the wrapping paper and open up Kite to the world. Here's what we've been working on: * Deep editor integrations: to make Kite better for smaller screens and more integrated into the coding workflow. You no longer have to dedicate a sidebar of your screen to Kite; instead, recommendations from Kite replace your editor’s autocompletions and hover results. * Fine-grained privacy controls modeled after the .gitignore file format means that you can selectively and precisely decide which files and folders Kite indexes. * Next generation type inference engine that uses both static analysis and statistical inference over Github. Kite beats PyCharm and Jedi by 32% on a typical Django project, offering more completions when you need them. * Ranked completions which put the most relevant completions at the top of the autocomplete box using techniques traditionally used in web search. * Kite for Windows. (And Linux in testing!) Check it out at kite.com.

djsumdog 10y ago
Does Kite still send all your code to Kite servers as you type? I remember that being an issue the last time someone talked about Kite on HN. I'm find with an editor or sidekick that can search stack overflow or duckduckgo or google quickly with a hotkey-- maybe keep snippets you can tag and easily reference-- but sending all my code as I type to a web service is something I'm not willing to do and something most companies won't allow.
- StyloBill 10y ago
  I think the answer to your question is : "* Fine-grained privacy controls modeled after the .gitignore file format means that you can selectively and precisely decide which files and folders Kite indexes."
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Unfortunately, that means that a really simple app where a developer hardcoded something like an API key, and didn't put it in a separate file they told Kite to ignore, will get uploaded. Any system that relies on people following best practices is doomed in the real world :(
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      You mean like Git?
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        Git isn't generally configured to automatically upload your files as you type or as files are saved. There are things like GitFS, but I imagine those aren't part of an average developer's workflow.
        Cyph0n 10y ago
        My point is that an inexperienced Git user can push their secrets to Github for example, just like a Kite user who doesn't specify a .kiteignore.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        My point is that it's a lot easier to happen accidentally when the upload happens automatically and without intervention. With git, you directly specify what files you're committing (with the .gitignore as an additional safety net) and when that commit happens. It's all manual. If I'm testing an app and I want to hard code an API key for testing, and I'm using Github, it's not a problem. I have to explicitly commit that file. Now, I have to both remember that Kite uploads everything, and avoid using that workflow at all, and use the .kiteignore thing (which is another random dotfile in my repo, great).
curiousgal 10y ago
> And Linux in testing! Awesome!
m_fayer 10y ago
This looks truly useful and innovative, well done! Two things come to mind, apologies if they're already addressed: The sidebar jumping around in the corner of my eye sounds really distracting, I wonder if there's some way to manually tell it to "update" or some other UX trick to ameliorate that, because the concept is great. I work in the healthcare sector, and I hope you guys do or will have the reams of datasec declarations and certifications needed for this to be usable in such a regulated context.
- adamsmith 10y ago
  Hi there! We've done two things to address the sidebar motion issue: 1) We've improved the sidebar's motion with an updated layout that creates fewer visual changes, and 2) We've been building deeper integration into the editors, with new UX around completions and looking things up. Check out the new demo video on the homepage—we think you'll like it! : ) Regarding datasec, unfortunately we haven't gotten to that level of security certifications yet, but we hope to get there soon!
jcwayne 10y ago
This would be a winner if the indexing were done locally and only usage data regarding public packages were sent to kite.com
mehaveaccount 10y ago
My first time hearing this. I would love to drop some coin if it improves my life, and I think a service like Kite was just waiting for someone to make it happen. I'll test out your demo version today to see if it helps
Bedon292 10y ago
How intertwined is the completion and the indexing? Could I .kiteignore * and then still use the functionality for completion and documentation on public code? Would it just send API calls based on the functions I am calling or something like that? I cannot send my code to you, nor will I be able to convince my company to pay for an enterprise version. I would pay for a personal version that has some sort of controls in place though. Can you not have it just cache locally based on the requirements.txt or the import lines at the top of the file? Then all you know is what I am importing, and I would be fine with that. Anything more, and sorry, can't do it.
devy 10y ago
How do I kill "com.kite.KiteHelper" from memory? It keeps reviving.
heroprotagonist 10y ago
This is tempting, particularly when learning new libraries, but it seems like it could be resolved with an offline database at some point instead of a hosted cloud service. This would probably improve performance a bit (in terms of responsiveness, rather than accuracy). I can see where you might want to index all of my code to add to your store of information about how frequently various functions are used, because "more is better" in terms of training data, but there are plenty of open-source projects that could be polled instead. For my own code, why not simply analyze my existing projects on my own machine without sending it elsewhere? It's pretty laughable that when one clicks through to the security page, the very first thing beyond the heading of "Security. Built in." is "Kite is Cloud Powered." as though that were a feature instead of a liability. While directory whitelisting and a .kiteignore seem like decent ways to prevent code from leaking, it's only one small bug away from disclosing a company's proprietary secret sauce to unknowns entities.
cdnsteve 10y ago
Very nice editor add-on. Looking forward to the Enterprise info as more becomes available.
AtheistOfFail 10y ago
I know this is your baby and all, but how high was your team (high as a kite?) when they thought sending every line of code to your server was a good idea? Seriously, could just send the object type being "autocompleted"along with the other object types in the same file and gotten better results without the privacy backlash.
- ako 10y ago
  Is it really that much worse than having code on a private GitHub repository or pushing Python code to a paas platform like pivotal?
  - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
    True, but Github and a PaaS platform tell you that your data is leaving your computer. It isn't something that happens in the background from a simple autocomplete application. The other thing is that a proper 12-factor app separates secrets and keys into environment variables that are not committed to Github or your PaaS. They are added after a deployment which this "product" just scoops up. For reference, here's what a AWS key being leaked on Github leads to (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/06/dev_blunder_shows_github_crawling_with_keyslurping_bots/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/06/dev_blunder_shows_g...). Now, imagine that project that is running in production having to be brought offline because this company leaks thousands of AWS keys that were used in development. It's dangerous, sloppy and stupid, three things I generally try not to mix.
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tweakz 10y ago

More information here: https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/28/kite-a-cloud-powered-developer-environment-takes-flight-on-windows-and-mac/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/28/kite-a-cloud-powered-deve...

falsedan 10y ago

> Your connection is not secure SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER

falsedan 10y ago
Ah, it's being blocked by work's OpenDNS malware detection…
- falsedan 10y ago
  https://domain.opendns.com/kite.com https://domain.opendns.com/kite.com doesn't show any unusual categories, we might be pulling security blacklists from another source.
  - falsedan 10y ago
    Yeah, we special-cased it because we're not comfortable with company IP being shipped offsite and potentially shared with other programmers.
    - brianorwhatever 10y ago
      sounds like someone at your work is doing their job well
  - bpicolo 10y ago
    My OpenDNS is also unhappy about it, getting all sorts of SSL cert issues.
deleted 10y ago
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inputcoffee 10y ago
I had a similar error, but when I looked into it it seems that the digital certificate was revoked (by issuer). I suspect others will have this issue. (On my windows 10 machine)

chinathrow 10y ago

Congrats on the launch. Did you address the issue which came up multiple times last time when this was on HN about cloud indexed code by default?

ayuvar 10y ago

The built-in examples for method use are a really cool feature. I hate having to jump to MSDN, etc just to find an example snippet when the argument comments are unclear.

jtraffic 10y ago
Yeah, I love the examples too. Where do they come from? I think allowing users to submit code examples could dramatically increase the value. Maybe even microservices. The ideal (and perhaps impossible) version would look at my code structure and suggest replacements for components from people who are better programmers than I am.

pkrefta 10y ago

Are there any plans to support Vim/Neovim ?

taraku 10y ago
Tarak from Kite here. Kite already supports vim/neovim on macOS with the Kite Sidebar!
- soperj 10y ago
  And coming to linux soon?
- spditner 10y ago
  Seems to only hook MacVim and it's companion console version, but not the system vim. Is there a .vimrc setting to ensure it's always activated?

js8 10y ago

I wish I had something like that for Haskell.. it could work by expected return type.

m-j-fox 10y ago
Haskell offers unreasonably featureful tooling like hoogle and codex but at the same time lacks basic editor integrations even in emacs which is supposed to be the premiere editor. Getting a good setup is something I can't do twice. What fork of ghcimod do I need this week and how many CPUs will she be pegging?

jentulman 10y ago

Has your cache/proxy fallen over? I'm getting a 404 for the base domain 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 759C55C7EA94F7D8 HostId: 2i2HH8A3vp5KFvhHhHeoQ+6AiFL/kjd5iByJy6Ouo/pbKwE2xaKP8Es4SU3//1/P7M/5KWJXQv8=

alexflint 10y ago
Thanks - we're investigating. Seems to be working in most places but there may be an edge node out of line.
- lurker456 10y ago
  same here, from Sweden 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 7928D2D3EE5313F6 HostId: 2iAqS6E1PciR/++frE0wVXo/jlBhK24kopo93WRvVieuepmCctk1v+m+yOAIZZz1q5qIA6HVH9w=
- ricardobeat 10y ago
  Getting the same here
- dimonomid 10y ago
  same here, from Bulgaria.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ezekg 10y ago

Looks awesome. Congrats on the launch! I'd pay for a Ruby/Rails version of this.

alexflint 10y ago
Great to hear - we'll be there soon :)

rohit33 10y ago

Curious to try Kite, I started to integrate Kite plugin into PyCharm until I saw they keep our code in the cloud which enables Kite do what it does. I'm not sure how many of them would be ok with their code being stored in a private cloud!

badthingfactory 10y ago
My largest concern is how frequently is my code sent to the cloud? Sometimes when building integrations, I hard code private keys just to get things working and then pull them out into config files that aren't checked into source control. Not knowing where that key might have gone would bother me.
- alexflint 10y ago
  One of the big things we've worked on over the past few months is giving users fine grained control of which files are indexed by kite: - Kite only indexes directories that you have explicitly enabled - You can create a .kiteignore file (same semantics as .gitignore) to exclude specific files / patterns.
  - badthingfactory 10y ago
    That clarifies things. Thanks!
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Do you have a sanitizer that detects stuff that looks like crypto keys and censors it before upload? Offhand, sounds like it would be pretty easy to compute just using an appropriate entropy measure.
  - askvictor 10y ago
    It would probably make sense to default to using .gitignore if a .kiteignore hasn't been specified; likely the same things that you'd want hidden.
  - deleted 10y ago

stevemk14ebr 10y ago

Do C and C++ and ill pay

inputcoffee 10y ago

Where are the Instructions? okay, so I am excited about this, don't mind some code in the cloud, but I am having trouble with a quick start. Downloaded it, had trouble launching it (expired certificate). Once I did launch it there are no instructions. I went into the tray and went to settings. It was trying to map my WHOLE USER FOLDER. I turned that off, and whitelisted a smaller folder for it to use. Set up a small test python file. Opened up a sublime file. Can you include some instructions about how Kite is supposed to integrate with anything? I see this cool video but it is not obvious how I am supposed to get it to work for myself.

adamsmith 10y ago
Hi inputcoffee, it sounds like you may have not been shown the install flow. Maybe try uninstalling Kite through the Control Panel, redownloading and installing again. (We had an Authenticode certificate issue that is now fixed.) If you don't see the Kite onboarding flow, email me at adam@kite.com and we'll figure out what's going on : ) Thanks for trying Kite. Would love you get you up and running!
- inputcoffee 10y ago
  That worked. It is actually pretty easy once is works. Thanks.

CopyZero 10y ago

This looks great. Any plans to support notepad++?

Philipp__ 10y ago

Looks really cool. Anyone tried to see how it integrates with Emacs?

atarian 10y ago

How do I uninstall Kite on OSX? It seems you guys keep a Kite Helper and Kite Engine process up that's impossible to quit out of and prevents me from deleting the app.

alexflint 10y ago
Sorry about this - it's embarrassing. We've been snowed under getting Kite ready for launch and didn't want to touch the update mechanism right before launch. We _will_ get this fixed ASAP. In the mean time, check out http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite
- atarian 10y ago
  Thank you for adding the instructions. I wanted to use Kite until I realized I had to upload my code. I think you guys need to mention that in your landing page's copy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jchung 10y ago
  I disagree with your decision on what feature set was necessary to be launch ready. Not to put too fine a point on it but I think it's worth saying out loud that software that users can't quit out of is not ready for launch, especially if your docs clearly state that quitting the app is required for uninstallation.
- Msurrow 10y ago
  Yeah, that doesn't work for uninstalling. The helper and engine keeps restarting when you quit them in step 2. rm -rf /Applications/Kite.app then kill the engine and helper Jesus, what a nice way to piss people off: 1. upload all code to cloud. 2. be hard to get rid off.
  - vhold 10y ago
    Yeah I immediately tried to uninstall it after seeing it required a login and had no preview functionality, and then immediately ran into the persistent process problem. Any application that puts a service like that on my system without my consent is blacklisted for life to be honest, there's no excuse for something like that. Later finding out it .. uploads your code to them.. it's really an insane thing, I think it's such a huge invasion of your machine and your privacy it should have been removed from the HN front page unless those facts were put immediate front and center.

li4ick 10y ago

No GNU/Linux support? Well, remind me when you do.

rwallace 10y ago
You can ask that on their website: enter your email address along with your operating system, language and editor, and it'll let you know when support for that combination is added.

welder 10y ago

Useful HN Discussion from the original 1.0 launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497111

madisonmay 10y ago

How close are you to a linux release?

alexflint 10y ago
Really, absurdly, ridiculously close. Like so close we almost delayed launch so that we could get it in.

citruspi 10y ago

Why are you encrypting my password (as opposed to hashing it)[0]? [0]: http://i.imgur.com/59VOotU.png http://i.imgur.com/59VOotU.png

alexflint 10y ago
Oops! That message is a remnant of the distant past and does not correspond in any way to what is actually happening under the hood.
- jchung 10y ago
  In that case, what exactly is happening under the hood?
  - AtheistOfFail 10y ago
    Also, 55 character limit? What the fuck did I type in my Delorean this morning?
    - axonic 10y ago
      nice and soft -.o

zeptomu 10y ago

Maybe a little bit off-topic and controversial, but in my opinion auto-complete is overrated. Doing software development is mostly reading code and documentation. Obviously one also writes code and for sure one can't memorize every function or package name, but searching for it isn't that much of a bottleneck? Some time ago I wrote Java using Eclipse (which had/has reasonable auto-complete), but when I switched to different languages, I also switched my IDE and mostly use plain text editors these days. There are auto-completion tools for text editors, but I just never invest the time to activate or configure them and AFAIK there aren't completion tools which work well across different languages. Maybe I revisit them at some point, but at the moment I do not really miss auto-completion.

inputcoffee 10y ago
I feel the opposite. I think, in the future, ideally, you will be able to do a programming interview, using a tool like kite, in a language you don't know and feel comfortable. So when I am learning a new language, I don't want to have to look up if the length of a vector is len(), length(), .len, .len(), .length() and so on. In fact, I don't want to do this for languages that I do "know".
- zeptomu 10y ago
  But what if it's called "size"?
  - foota 10y ago
    Maybe a synonym aware documentation searching autocomplete?
  - klibertp 10y ago
    It works like this: aCollection.<TAB> list of all the method on given collection pops up. If it's short, just skim it and choose something which appropriate. If it's long: aCollection.l<TAB> check if there's something similar to length/len, use it, otherwise: aCollection.l<BACKSPACE>c<TAB> check if there's something similar to count then use it, if not: aCollection.l<BACKSPACE>s<TAB> check if there's something similar to size and use it. Finally, if all the guesses failed, defer to documentation or google. Basically, (semantic) auto-complete is an inline quick-search facility for docs. Very, very useful if you know how to use it effectively.

bcherny 10y ago

Awesome work! Any chance you can add TypeScript to the "Vote for a Language" menu?

hasenj 10y ago

In my professional job I work with code that is private and copy righted by the company that's employing me and praying my salary, not to mention sometimes I edit files that contain sensitive or critical information like passwords and secret encryption/decryption keys. Anything that sends all my code to the cloud is automatically disqualified. EDIT: thanks for the downvote btw.

GavinMcG 10y ago
So this product isn't for you. That's okay! It doesn't need to be for everyone.
pikzen 10y ago
That is a valid concern, and anyone downvoting this is so far down the hype machine that there's no saving them anymore. Kite is a breach of privacy for 80% of professional software developers that work on a private codebase. You are sending your code directly to a third party, without even any ways for you to prevent that. At least asking on SO you can change your code so it isn't 100% obvious what you're doing. The fact that this remote upload is mentioned nowhere on the landing page and can only be inferred from the Kite Enterprise very short description is a bit worrying. However, starting a few Python projects myself soon, this looks like a great extension. I suppose the suggestion for VS Code has been made dozens of times already though.

vitiral 10y ago

Great, now uncle Sam knows everything I'm thinking while I program. No thanks, I'd like to have SOME privacy. What I punch into my editor shouldn't be public until I git push.

alexnewman 10y ago

Seems down

turtlebits 10y ago

The documentation font for me is way too small, any way to make it bigger? You can see my IDE font size on the left. http://imgur.com/a/4B2GB http://imgur.com/a/4B2GB

tedmiston 10y ago

Congrats on the launch! As any early beta user on public code, I was really impressed by Kite and my only concern was ability to use it on private codebases ie, work code. Glad to see that you've addressed that. Does the Sublime integration support packages installed in the current virtual environment (that might not be publicly available)? Aside: The pricing page is broken on iOS.

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bartkappenburg 10y ago

Just an honest (legal) concern: Is stack overflow ok with having their answers inside an IDE? This decreases the number of pageviews on SO for each installed client. Is that something you guys checked?

AstralStorm 10y ago
Of course nobody cares about legality. Caring about it is not The Start-up Way. Bonus again if you get a major snippet from a third party library with an incompatible license.
nostrademons 10y ago
StackOverflow comments are Creative Commons, with the code licensed under MIT: http://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing http://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-license-the-mit-this-time-with-attribution-required/272960 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-l... Both are attribution-required.

saikouzen 10y ago

just a blank page for me: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_fqMwJbAXzURzRTWlNhN25INWc https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_fqMwJbAXzURzRTWlNhN25INW...

AstralStorm 10y ago

In the meantime, get your code grabbed by major companies writing search engines. Good luck with privacy. Bonus points for accidental license violations.

otto_ortega 10y ago

I hope they add support for Php7 soon. Seems like a very useful add-on.

tekklloneer 10y ago

I straight up cannot use Kite. The "code-to-cloud" functionality means that I cannot use it at work. I would love to use it, but it's a non-starter.

adamsmith 10y ago
We really wanted to knock out the core functionality of Kite for Python, and are now exploring on prem deployments of Kite. If this is an important feature for you we'd love to chat. (I'm adam@kite.com.)
- tekklloneer 10y ago
  Yeah, I'd love to try it. However, I'm at work and that's where I would be trying it - and I can't. Aside from intellectual policy problems, in large codebases mistakes happen, including api keys being committed and pushed. You see it even in open source projects, and tools like gitrob[1] exist to exploit that. You can see how both of those example issues are problematic, if even a snapshot of your codebase is being pushed off-site. I think this is a crucially important feature for any large enterprise that has a codebase that is a significant effort of R&D resources. Don't get me wrong, there are cloud services like github being used by medium to large shops, but the missing visibility into those decisions is that those choices are often regularly heavily vetted by security, legal, and engineering resources. 1 https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob
  - tekklloneer 10y ago
    tldr ill get in trouble if i use kite at work :(
gr3yh47 10y ago
check out dash docs + alfred integration for offline code documentation search at your fingertips

jMyles 10y ago

Does the cloud connectivity requirement mean that kite cannot be used offline?

gigatexal 10y ago

Been waiting for this! Stoked to try it out.

gigatexal 10y ago

The website isn't intuitive on mobile. Do you have to do something special to get the Java client?

progval 10y ago

Could you make your website not display a blank page if the browser has Javascript disabled? The content does not seem dynamic, so a simple HTML page should work.

andreashansen 10y ago
Just out of curiosity, why do you have JavaScript disabled?
- somecallitblues 10y ago
  Im interested in this too. Why?
- mehaveaccount 10y ago
  Security
  - xutopia 10y ago
    How is having Javascript enabled less secure?
    - ianhowson 10y ago
      Greater attack surface.
      - axonic 10y ago
        Yeah, like doors or Windows in your home. Take it however you like.
        progval 10y ago
        A home without doors cannot be used. A browser without Javascript can be.
- 10y ago

Sir_Substance 10y ago

Interesting project. If I look at one of your code examples/snippets, realize that's exactly what I need and copy it verbatim, where does that leave me, legally?

alexflint 10y ago
Great point. We need to address this. Right now the examples are written and owned by us (Kite), so you would technically be in uncertain legal territory (depending on whether fair use was applied per-example or per-page). We will change this to make it crystal clear that copying examples is allowed.
- Sir_Substance 10y ago
  Sounds good to me!

nikolay 10y ago

The sidebar is way too obtrusive!

languagehacker 10y ago

I just tried Kite on my Mac, and I was really not pleased with it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is questionable at best when the code you're working on isn't necessarily your own. Having Kite running in the background without a way to disable or uninstall it feels like nothing short of malware. The lack of documentation for how to uninstall Kite from your machine or how to remove your data from their cloud is also pretty worrisome.

stwe 10y ago
The developers of Kite also replaced the functionality of a popular python autocomplete Atom extension from using jedi to Kite without properly warning the users: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...
- tedmiston 10y ago
  The CEO's response in that thread is very clear that they added an additional option to use Kite, and did not make Kite the default or replace the default.
  - stwe 10y ago
    I was a happy user of the python autocomplete package with Jedi for some time. Starting in November 2016 they introduced kite-specific code, shipping kite-installer as a dependency and also added tracking of your autocompletion behaviour (I suspect this is where they get their Kite vs. Jedi performance numbers from). Only in February 2017 I noticed that the whole package had changed right under me because of an error traceback window caused by their metrics collection going wrong. I looked at the package settings and IIRC there was a checkmark set for the "Use Kite" option which I'm pretty sure I did not set myself. The telemetry collection alone is a deal breaker for me. But I also don't like the sneaky way they practically took over the package without clear notice and consent. The package README still makes no mention of Kite and the package is running under the innocently looking 'autocomplete-python' GitHub org instead of their 'kiteco' org. To me it's a very fishy 'growth hacking' strategy.

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sidmitra 10y ago

The Linux version isn't available still. Is it just on HN or are there very few people now who use Linux as their main dev machine? With some of the build quality of the new Dell Machines I would have assumed any dev tool would be Linux first, since almost everyone is using some form of 'nix on the servers. I've never had much trouble installing the latest Ubuntu on any of XPS series(except the 'suspend' feature is weird). EDIT: nvm i see from another comment that the Linux version is in testing. But still weird to see Mac devs outnumber Linux ones(or maybe they're just a vocal minority :-) )

michaelmior 10y ago

> it has twice the documentation coverage of any other tool. Curious how they could possibly quantify that.

Scaevolus 10y ago

Does this have anything to do with Kythe, "a pluggable, (mostly) language-agnostic ecosystem for building tools that work with code"? https://kythe.io/ https://kythe.io/

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arihant 10y ago

Since this program uploads code to the cloud, it would be worthy to clarify if it cleans out strings before upload or not. Because if it does not, it is a serious concern as it puts secret keys in code in awful risk. They also run a background process that needs to be manually killed to be able to uninstall. It feels like a quarantine. This is an editor plugin, is there really no simpler way to provide uninstall capability?

adamsmith 10y ago
To clarify, on Windows the uninstaller is just one step: double click Kite from the Programs & Features section of Control panel. Unfortunately on Mac you have to quit Kite before it can be dragged to the trash. You can do that from the menubar icon or by killing "Kite Engine". (You don't need to quit Kite Helper to drag to the Trash.) See instructions here http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite. We'll be improving this on Mac shortly.
- sebleon 10y ago
  Welp - after reading through these comments, seems like privacy and code upload are huge concerns. Might be worth it for you guys to get ahead of this, and address these issues explicitly on the home page and during installation. It will lower short-term usage & install numbers, but probably won't hurt long-term retention and word of mouth sharing.
  - adamsmith 10y ago
    Thanks, we appreciate the constructive feedback! We've worked really hard to make sure we're clearly communicating what's happening (transparency), and adding fine grained controls. We have a very clear step during the install flow that talks about how Kite works, and we will prompt for whitelisting within each of the editor plugins that can work without the sidebar (Atom, ST3, PyCharm). We also have a security page (https://kite.com/security https://kite.com/security) that points to our various resources related to this, including more details about our control mechanisms—including .kiteignore—and how we think about security (our four principles). We also know that some companies need on-premise Kite to make this work. We're exploring that now with customers, and would love to chat with you if it's something you need. (https://kite.com/enterprise https://kite.com/enterprise) I know none of these are silver bullets. Thanks for your comment as we work with users to figure out how to make this work. We hope you'll give Kite a spin when you can—we think it's pretty transformative—and we hope to be able to address all of your concerns soon! : )

invokesus 10y ago

Not working behind a http-proxy. Dealbreaker for me.

devy 10y ago

Just installed it but realized that our code cannot be shared to the cloud with a 3rd party before I open it. So I am trying to delete/uninstall Kite. Been wrestling with com.kite.KiteHelper for the last half an hour and still couldn't get it off my laptop memory. Tried "killall", "kill -9" and force quit from Activity Monitor. It kept reviving. And yes, I've check out the help site and this article in particular, didn't help: http://help.kite.com/article/22-how-do-i-quit-kite http://help.kite.com/article/22-how-do-i-quit-kite Already disliking this software...

jd20 10y ago

On the pages for plugins (like Atom, Sublime, etc...) you might want a simple "how to install". Took me several minutes of confusion, to realize I should open up Atom and search for Kite from there. I kept thinking there should be a download link for the plugins, before remembering that's not how editor plugins get installed these days :)

nichochar 10y ago

I appreciate people trying to build "cool" products, but the downsides of this are so high that people should heavily consider never using it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is a massive liability. To top this, the people interested in "something magical that codes for me" are not the good developers, their users are very most likely beginners, bootcamp coders, junior engineers, etc... I think they're abusing trust through obscurity, people have no idea that their code is being uploaded. Making this the default for a very common python-autocomplete in atom is even worse... see this: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...

azeirah 10y ago
> the people interested in "something magical that codes for me" are not the good developers No matter how much I code, I'll always have to look at documentation. This is just faster documentation, I really don't see the problem from that perspective.

hollander 10y ago

Little Flocker and Little Snitch nightmare, this is.

theSoenke 10y ago

This seems really great on the first look, but uploading the code is a real issue. It is basically a keylogger

jnordwick 10y ago

I love the ideas in the search, and would definitely buy, except... I work in finance, and source code in the cloud could get me some prison time.

slang800 10y ago

Has anyone tried building something like this, but doing the analysis locally and just pulling from a documentation repository like Dash? I don't like the idea of uploading my code to their server, or using a proprietary tool, but I really want documentation lookups in my editor.

simplehuman 10y ago

Why so much concern about the code ? GitHub, Travis all do the same...

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jameside 10y ago

I'd be interested in trying Kite for JavaScript when it's ready. Most of my company's code base is open source and we do a lot of open source work so Kite could be a nice fit one day. Trying out Kite on our actual code base for a week would be a real litmus test for me. We're comfortable with sending our closed-source code to GitHub and our secrets to Google Cloud and AWS so I can see a path towards being more comfortable with uploading code to Kite as well. Some guarantees around privacy and the ability to delete our code and derived data could help assuage concerns. In the meantime, perhaps you could highlight that the code uploading is opt-in on a per-file or per-directory basis (though one issue with this is that our open-sourcing system allows for private subdirectories within public parent directories and we'd want finer control)? I'd feel good about having clarity around what's uploaded and what's kept local. In any case this seems really cool for open-source projects to start with. I'd definitely give the JavaScript version a try. And do you think you could add a VS Code extension?

axonic 10y ago

Dear Kite, I really love this idea, but hell no I'm not using it yet. Here's why... I'll cut to the point here, so please forgive the bluntness as I mean no insult or accusation, just honest criticism, and I'm gonna try to cover a lot in as small a space as possible. There's not even a mention on kite.com about how data is handled that I can find anywhere. What is the method of transport? What stands between skids and my code? The server my data goes to, is it shared VPS hardware waiting to get pwned by your neighbor, xtremecrackz.zyx or is it on private servers guarded by a three headed puppy named Κέρβερος, 13 ninja, and biometric security? Does the page even mention this is a cloud service somewhere? I see support for VS Code, but not MSVS proper, emacs but not specifically GNU/Linux yet; Mac support but not Linux in spite of at least $4M USD in seed and 3 years of development (source: crunchbase [1])? The Windows download page gives instructions for bypassing SmartScreen warnings meaning your code signing certificate has no reputation with Microsoft yet if I understand correctly. Frankly, I didn't think "Adam Smith" was even a real person until I checked it out. LOL, sorry bro but it sounds kinda generic to someone skeptical I guess. Maybe you assume trust since you travel in the circles you do, but we nutjobs like stuff in writing, and trust assumptions without verification are bad practice anyhow -.- (on trust) Your investor who may or may not provide the same or similar "Kite" software discussed in GCHQ leaks as a "correlates-anything" solution, Palantir Technologies, has been standing in the suspiciously shadowy center of a maelstrom in some circles. I like them supporting our warfighting - but not working against the people of the United States, or anyone's civilians for that matter, however that's an argument for the agencies they contracted with. I've watched my brothers bleed out defending the rights their software has helped undermine, I'm not sure how to feel about them at all right now. Do I want to give my code to their creepy software? No, not really, since I'd have to consider that if they got a contract they might, without even knowing the end use, build software to guide Terminators to hunt down and kill civilians who write bad code or wear plaid socks. Seriously though: eyebrow raised. (advice) I would add more clear information about how this all works. A link to security answers should come up before the footer IMO, given the nature of this product. Going out of my way to look for it, I guess it seems like security was an afterthought. I can appreciate your blog post about security [2] and the main security page which links to that article (merge these?), but they fail to answer almost all of my questions. They imply that the service isn't really ready for the spotlight, but do not explicitly say anywhere to safeguard sensitive stuff or not to trust everything just yet, but it seems softly implied to me. (bigFoilHat) This might sound far out to some, feel free to ignore or laugh, but if I were an evil puppet master, I'd have my cybersecurity and intelligence contractor who provides access to mission critical software or monetary capital for a startup attempt to leverage this relationship to gain information about code in the wild and specific targets' code using this service, perhaps to have software look for opportunities to steal parts of keys, suggest code changes to enable exploitation, forward copies of code from persons of interest to investigators. I might ask them to approach them as patriots in the interest of the GWOT and all things decent, to tacitly and deniably or perhaps even expressly cooperate with legally and morally grey-area surveillance operations. Perhaps if there is no cooperation or just to keep it quiet, I might suggest they infiltrate Kite.com and gain the ability to intercept data clandestinely by using their trust and rapport with company leadership. "Plz send all code to spies and disable security stuffz kthxbai" I can weaken my own PRNGs and send copies of my code for spooks to analyze by myself without assistance thanks. Again, I'm attempting to honestly characterize how it makes me feel, just sayin'. I simply have no way to even fool myself into thinking I can know what goes on with my data after it leaves my PC. How do I even build rules for my firewalls? What are the parent processes which need communication, on which ports, using what protocols? Which servers will it upload to? Can we blacklist certain destinations by region or other attributes? I think you need a more robust explanation on the site before us crazy people are satisfied. (bigFoilHat Q) HN: what say you, am I just being paranoid here in thinking that users' analyzed code may end up being displayed on an alphabet soup agency wiki somewhere along with download links for tools to suprisebuttsecks us being passed out to every malware hoarding contractor who accidentally skated past the SF-86? Maybe I'm just having a bad bout of Stallman Syndrome. One might argue "99.99% of users' code will be useless fluff and bizcruft, who cares if they copy my der.py code?" but finding that 0.01% relevant signal in the noise is exactly what Palantir does for customers, isn't it? So how can I flippantly dismiss the notion? (Q) Do you sell, gift, trade, share, or otherwise disclose or make available knowingly any information about users' personal data or source code, even if anonymized or generalized in reports and detached from identifying information, to other parties? Can/will/do these parties include your investors? Does Palantir Technologies store, use, or have access to at any time, our source code or any information about it or ourselves? That said, it sounds cool as phrack and I would love to see this in many languages and editors, but only if it can be trusted somehow. I'll be watching and investigating, thanks for sharing this on HN, -Ax [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite-com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite-com/ [2] https://kite.com/blog/thoughts-on-security https://kite.com/blog/thoughts-on-security Please correct anything I am mistaken about, I admit I could be completely off the mark here.

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karsinkk 10y ago

I just spent an awful amount of time trying to uninstall Kite. There were two background processes: Kite Helper and Kite Engine Which showed up on Activity Monitor,and I could never get them to quit, each time I killed a process with the PID, a zombie would spawn up with a different PID. Eventually I killed them both by removing the Kite packages from the Cache in library, emptying the trash and then restarting my machine.Phew! Not to mention the slow autocomplete suggestions in Sublime Text 3. I think I'll just stick with my old setup.

partycoder 10y ago

Dash (Mac OS X), Velocity (Windows) and Zeal (Windows/Linux) do something similar. There are plugins for various editors.

partycoder 10y ago

This program uploads your code to a central server. Please flag this submission.

plazma 10y ago

This makes me learn python. Any plans for javascript and Vim plugin?

shultays 10y ago

Most Popular Articles and the first one How do I uninstall Kite? I guess I will pass

nuggien 10y ago

not sure if this has been thought of before but why don't you just have kite cloud index open source and public code, and then have a separate local index for the user's project code. That way, autocompletes/help/doc searches first the user's project index (local), and then search the kite cloud for public/opensource code index.

replete 10y ago

Looks awesome but there is no way in hell I'm uploading my code to your cloud. Instantly violates NDAs.

nikhil13 10y ago

I have been using it on sublime. After adding kite is has started lagging, a lot. And that's when I have quite good configuration in my laptop. Hope you look into it

bryanapperson 10y ago

This would be nice... however it does not work unless you upload your code. Code upload should be optional and only for enhanced functionality within your code base.

craigds 10y ago

I'd love to try this out, it looks amazing. But it's just not acceptable to send all the code to the cloud. I'd love to use a self-hosted version though.

AdamTheAnalyst 10y ago

Upload all my code to your cloud first.... erm, hell no - uninstalled. Enterprise wont use this at all, way to big of a risk.

peternicky 10y ago

What is the timeline for rolling out JavaScript support?