13 ms·

Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

347 points by andrewpareles 2y ago

Hey HN, I'm Andrew, one of the creators of Void. I made this open source version of Cursor where you can get all of Cursor's core features but in a fully-customizable IDE (ctrl+k, ctrl+L). We love Cursor but there are so many other features we want to build, like allowing AI to edit multiple files at once, or giving AI better understanding of your file system. Void is the open-source, fully customizable tool we've been wanting. The hard part: we're building Void as a fork of vscode. The repo has great documentation for extensions, but going deeper gets pretty involved. All of the code is OOP-based, and they mount DOM nodes the old-school way (which is what React was supposed to solve..). So adding new UI features isn't exactly trivial. Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source so we (and Cursor) have to hack our way through it. One thing we're excited about is refactoring and creating docs so that it's much easier for anyone to contribute. The other benefit of open source is we don't need to hide how our prompts are built, so we can transfer the private API logic that Cursor has right onto your local machine. This lets you host a model on-prem and have your data stay completely private. It also means you can go directly to LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) instead of going through us as a middleman. There's still a lot to build, and full disclosure, we are very early stage. But we're super excited about building and have a working prototype that we're quickly adding features to. Let us know if there's anything you want to see in a Cursor-style editor. Or feel free to shoot us a pull request. Cheers!

storafrid 2y ago
Hi, thanks for sharing. A question: What is the advantage of this approach compared to the tool I'm using right now - continue.dev ?
nextworddev 2y ago
Cursor needs some competition. Their generation quality fell off a cliff recently as they are doing behind the scenes product optimizations with LLMs
- maeil 2y ago
  I'm not sure why SourceGraph is struggling so much that I have to do it for them (maybe the name?), but Cody is competition and has the benefit of being an extension instead of a fork.
MacsHeadroom 2y ago
Tried the get in touch link, but the Google form says I need permission to view it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mp5 2y ago
  Should be fixed now!
BoorishBears 2y ago
I'm surprised no one in targeting Jetbrains IDEs as seriously as Cursor has targeted vscode. I'd imagine Jetbrains users are much more willing to pay, and the non-AI intelligence Webstorm has baked in save me almost as much cognitive load as Cursor does if not more compared to base vscode. I tried Continue but it wasn't very smooth at all.
- bilekas 2y ago
  Jetbrains isn't open source and this seems to be a fork of vscode, not an extension so there's a bit more control on what's being done here. Edit : This is only my guess, I have no internal knowledge of Cursor.
  - kevo1ution 2y ago
    Intellij community edition is open source, but not the enterprise version. However, CE is pretty feature rich with a ton of users and if you're targeting indie developers, most are on CE anyways. I'd say if you do Intellij, you have to be in for the long game to build up to enterprise, but its doable.
    - bilekas 2y ago
      That's interesting actually, I didn't know they even had a community edition but as I am reading anyway it seem it supports only Android, Swing, and JavaFX. That's quite a limitation no?
- kkarpkkarp 2y ago
  Supermaven[1] has addons for vscode as well for jetbrains (and neovim). And it is so good that I quickly decided for their paid plan [1] https://supermaven.com/ https://supermaven.com/
  - hboon 2y ago
    They have announced they are building an editor; so while I'm a subscriber, I'm not sure how long the plugins will last
prasoonds 2y ago
This is cool! I'm a regular user of Cursor (I barely write any code now - just prompt and tab tab tab). The thing that's really keeping me in Cursor (vs decamping for Zed) is NOT the Cmd K or the sidebar chat. It's actual Cursor's Tab autocomplete model. I've tried many other tab completion models and Cursor Tab blows them out of the water. Supermaven's new release is promising, however. For the use-case you're solving for (issues with code-privacy), I think something like https://codeium.com/ https://codeium.com/ does already allow for on-prem deployments with enterprise support. I'm trying to think of who would be served well by a fork of VSCode vs Continue.dev or something like a codeium VPS deployment.
- thih9 2y ago
  Curious: what is your use case for cursor, i.e. what is the problem domain or complexity level (on a scale from boilerplate code to core architecture) that you typically work with? Also what plan are you on and is that enough for your needs?
  - prasoonds 2y ago
    Hi, we're working with an large typescript codebase and I develop fully fledged features with Cursor which involve non-trivial UI wiring up work. Decent amount of state management using React too. It's definitely not boilerplate level code - but it also also stops well short of architecture level work. Here's a recent prompt of me trying to implement line-by-line diff generation: https://pastebin.com/WRJpNwqc https://pastebin.com/WRJpNwqc When I need to do architectural/design work, I do it in multiple passes, not generating any code, just lots detailed text with tons of feedback/back-and-forth with the model. I'm on the pro plan but it's not enough for my needs - I run through the quota in 10-15 days. Then, I revert to using Sonnet 3.5 via API key.
- boomskats 2y ago
  Big fan of Codeium here. They're the only player who took vim/neovim users seriously from the start, and it's great to see people building extensions like monkoose/neocodeium. Their models or ux may not always be the best available, but their understanding of their target market and their product positioning is peak IMO, particularly the enterprise/on-prem options you mentioned. My money's on them long-term.
boomskats 2y ago
Congrats on getting it this far! The fun is just beginning, but it does sound like you have an idea of what you're getting into. Here are some thoughts: There are quite a few extensions and AI editors offering the snippet-like 'tab autocomplete', but Cursor are the only ones afaik who have nailed the full file no-look 'tab-tab-tab-tab autofix' workflow, with what I assume must be a combination of monaco/vscode hackery similar to what you're doing, and their own tuned model (i.e. not an off-the-shelf llm). Is this the piece you're going after when you say 'all of Cursor's core features', or are you primarily focused on something else? On the topic of extensions, as an occasional user of Cursor I noticed that they've always been able to quite happily 'import' extensions you've already downloaded to a local VSCode profile, which makes sense, but they've occasionally struggled to use the same marketplace APIs for searching for extensions. I'm not sure what you're hoping for here, but I'd suggest you settle for that approach as a starting point. Also be conscious that you're dealing with Microsoft, so be mindful of things like their brand guidelines[0], and avoid telling the world that you're 'hacking away' at their APIs. These things may seem insignificant and it's true that they probably won't cause you a problem unless you're successful. Lastly, assuming that you're hoping to recruit contributors (which I assume is some of the motivation behind this post): you really need to sanitise your Github workflow and your repo CI. Your commit history[1] currently seems to mostly consist of you updating your docs and committing straight to your main branch with no review process or checks, and the only commit I can see that does have any kind of check in place, your initial commit, has a failed monaco check that you seem to have subsequently just disabled. You'll need to tidy this up a _lot_ and establish a testing baseline if you want to successfully scale the project or attract the calibre of contributor you'll need to be successful. Hope that helps, best of luck with the project! [0]: https://code.visualstudio.com/brand https://code.visualstudio.com/brand [1]: https://github.com/voideditor/void/commits/main/ https://github.com/voideditor/void/commits/main/
- dan_man 2y ago
  That is the only reason I use Cursor. The autocomplete is way too good. For refactors, it's just magic! I tried using VSCode after using Cursor for a whole month and Copilot is just straight trash in comparison. I'd like to continue using Cursor but I'm don't want to have to buy Claude subscription twice (Cursor uses claude under the hood), and I prefer claude sonnet over chat-gpt.
boomskats 2y ago
Seems to be a dupe of another Show HN post posted by the same user 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41523197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41523197
- kevo1ution 2y ago
  launched twice? gotta launch as much as possible in this competitive landscape
  - lagniappe 2y ago
    If you're not shipping, you're slipping
    - yard2010 2y ago
      And if you're slipping you can't dip in
- mp5 2y ago
  We did a smaller launch a few days ago, but we've actually made a lot of changes to our github contributing page, website, logo since then (based on the feedback). Just trying to ship fast, haha.
  - boomskats 2y ago
    I only just realised you're YC-backed. Makes sense, glhf
  - candiddevmike 2y ago
    Doesn't sound like it warrants another post.
    - debo_ 2y ago
      Given that this one is getting traction, I think it indeed warranted another post.
kevo1ution 2y ago
My primary usage of cursor is cmd+L and cmd+K, I'll give it a shot. Also, makes sense to make an open source alternative. How do you plan on monetizing?
- mp5 2y ago
  We plan on selling to enterprise companies. We know a lot of companies want to keep their repos private and so we offer them on-prem hosting options. Closed source tools can't really do this because they have to keep their prompt building algorithms behind a private API that they own. This seems to work pretty well for Codeium, which offers its product free to consumers (at a loss), and is still able to make net profit from enterprise companies. At least that's the plan for now!
  - lagniappe 2y ago
    >We know a lot of companies want to keep their repos private and so we offer them on-prem hosting options. Is there anything more than this?
  - kevo1ution 2y ago
    makes sense! Excited for y'all
cvzakharchenko 2y ago
Oh, I’m yet to find a good alternative to Cursor’s RAG-powered side chat. It helps me work with huge codebases so much. Tried Continue, but it’s very unstable, and doesn’t work as well. Would prefer a command line solution, vscode plugin is the next choice, having a separate editor is not ideal, but I’m glad there’s some competition.
- kvakkefly 2y ago
  Not sure if this is what you'd like, but I remember this repo from some time ago https://github.com/Storia-AI/sage https://github.com/Storia-AI/sage Storia-AI/sage: Chat with any codebase with 2 commands
  - cvzakharchenko 2y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion! It needs some work to set up, and it looks like it only works on Github repos. Also, to work with non-local LLMs, you can only use Pinecone for vector storage. I might have misunderstood something, but I will check it out again later.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fredoliveira 2y ago
  > Would prefer a command line solution I haven't tried this myself so I apologize if it ends up being bad, but I've seen Aider [0] get linked a few times from people who wanted a CLI solution for AI code completion. [0]: https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/
  - cvzakharchenko 2y ago
    Aider is really cool for small projects, but it builds a repo map instead of using RAG. That works on small codebases, but totally fails to be useful on large ones.
    - 2y ago
rhardih 2y ago
If anyone can point in the direction of a Cursor like experience, but within Neovim, I'm definitely in the market for that option.
- tmerse 2y ago
  - https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim - https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim Did not have the time to test them yet and there are probably more.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
j0e1 2y ago
As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals. However, I found Theia (https://theia-ide.org https://theia-ide.org) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on this site) and find it a much better fit for our OSS goals (foundation owned, open-source marketplace) with full mod-ability while being compatible to VSCode extensions API (in theory). I recommend you look into it for your app.
- aswerty 2y ago
  Is Theia related to Eclipse (the traditional Java IDE)? Or is the reference to "eclipse" just an unfortunate naming collision?
  - einsteinx2 2y ago
    They created it, but the code base is unrelated.
  - TiredOfLife 2y ago
    Theia is the Monaco editor from VS Code with a different ui
  - chikei 2y ago
    It's made by Eclipse Foundation which was created to host projects around Eclipse the IDE. Kind of like project under Apache brand, Apache foundation and Apache the HTTP server.
- tristan957 2y ago
  You can publish your extensions on OpenVSX fyi. A lot of projects have started doing that now. Not all, but a good amount. Glad you found Theia though.
  - wesleyyue 2y ago
ac130kz 2y ago
Good job at creating more competition, but sorry for being a little bit rude, most software forks die out, try to convince me using this instead of Continue + Claude-dev, which are open source extensions for the vanilla VSCode (or VSCodium). >Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source Ehm, Open VSX Registry exists.
- replete 2y ago
  Are you using a local model with Continue?
  - ac130kz 2y ago
    I've tried running 3B LLAMA on my old machine and it was sluggish and kinda bad, but Claude 3.5 Sonnet works great. I will try the 70B model, should be good enough.
    - dartos 2y ago
      Yeah, I’ve found local models are completely useless for coding tasks whereas openai and Claude can at least do some refactors with guidance
    - replete 2y ago
      I didn't have much success with ollama either. You really need a great accelerator for it to be useful enough. Codestral however is working out great so thanks for the tip.
lagniappe 2y ago
Hey congrats on the release. I don't have much to add other than to ask for more context about this statement- > allowing AI to edit multiple files at once Cursor already modifies multiple files at the same time. I typically do this by pressing cmd+shift+I and in the left side of the window the required files will be shown as they're being modified.
nunobrito 2y ago
Plus points if keeping the tool free for home/OSS users and then charge for corporate or on-premise deployments. One critical question to the users: Is Void able to understand the source code files from the project as a whole? What I mean is being able to read the project, and then make suggestions based on the code that was written and propose new functions? For example, I would see it as fantastic to write unit tests where I'd say: "Please write a unit test that is verifying the functions on ABC.class" or "update the unit tests for ABC.class". I know it is difficult for an LLM to create a valid result on the first try, but at least it does same me a lot of time creating a skeleton with most of the functions and samples already there. Most times just have to fine tune or fix a few parts but can say it amplifies my output speed by at least 10x to have that kind of functionality. What is your impression? Can it read all source code files on the project?
bluelightning2k 2y ago
Why is this a Show HN not a launch HN? Is it simply a concept and not yet fleshed out? Hard sell to choose you especially as a full on editor replacement (as well as a copilot replacement) without a demo or even gifs.
- Terretta 2y ago
  Waitlist.
blindluck 2y ago
Why are so many coding assistant forks? Is it fashion or is there a technical reason? Imagine Python support being a fork. Or live server.
- dsmurrell 2y ago
  Because it's hard to reimplement VSCode from scratch?
  - blindluck 2y ago
    VSCode has plugins
    - andypants 2y ago
      They are making changes that cannot be done or are very difficult with vscode extensions
      - blindluck 2y ago
        What might they be? API calls, read all files, write to files, side bar, UI interactions in editor. These are things I would imagine an extension can do. Continue.dev is an example.
oliwarner 2y ago
Do you need to "own" the whole editor to do what you're doing? Just maintaining sync with upstream is a massive rod for your own back, and I don't see what you gain. As others have said, alternative registries exist, and installation instructions of standalone plugins are easier on users than downloading and installing a whole editor. Can't you just do your own "Copilot" extension and plumb in an instance to ollama? Isn't that what Continue does? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Continue.continue https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Continue...
- dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
  - dangsux 2y ago
    [dead]
elAhmo 2y ago
This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev perfectly exemplifies the VC spray-and-pray approach by backing two nearly identical open-source VSCode plugins for AI-assisted coding. They're simply throwing money at similar projects in the same space, hoping one will stick, without any special insight or reason why one should be more successful over another.
- mft_ 2y ago
  I’m interested; are you suggested this is a bad thing, or just highlighting something of interest?
  - elAhmo 2y ago
    Not a bad thing, but just a reflection that among some of these products there is nothing special when compared to rest of the bunch, there are very similar products (even backed by the same investor), and us users have no clear idea what is different between them, if anything, and why we should use one over another. I guess similar theme can be seen in LLM/AI space in general, or previously in the streaming services, just throw as much money at the problem in the hope that your solution will stick, without any significant and clear differentiation.
- re-thc 2y ago
  > This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev Oh there's a lot more than that.
  - elAhmo 2y ago
    Just the two that I have recently been checking out and, as many other commenters in this thread asked, what is the difference between the two? I guess investors know something we don't, or they are just throwing money at the wall...
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  This is VC operations by design since forever. Heck, even centuries ago, they'd fund multiple ship crews to navigate the Earth, hoping one would find smth interesting. It's the model that works in high-risk, high-reward endeavors.
rie_t 2y ago
I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible. Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?
- qeternity 2y ago
  Because it's difficult to monetize extensions and justify a large VC valuation... (Void is HN backed)
  - mritchie712 2y ago
    Are you HN backed when your Show HN gets over 200 votes?
    - promiseofbeans 2y ago
      The linked website says "Backed by Y Combinator" lol
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  Idk, continue is absolute trash at the moment. It manages to break my entire VScode environment, including vim hotkeys.
- d4rkp4ttern 2y ago
  A lot of folks prefer JetBrains over VSC. For example my top choice for an AI Editor today is Zed.dev which lets you trivially setup to use a variety of key maps including JetBrains. https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/
  - replete 2y ago
    Zed looks promising, I'm waiting on editorconfig support PR to drop
    - 2y ago
Tepix 2y ago
> Any LLM, Anywhere. > Host your own models locally, or communicate directly with your favorites. Looks fantastic, will happily try this!
Sauravsingh6 2y ago
release date?
jmartin2683 2y ago
It’s just been so long since going from ‘head to code’ has been the hard part for me. I’d imagine you have to be very unfamiliar for this to be useful.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fathomas 2y ago
But why does it have to be a VSCode fork? Couldn’t it be a VSCode plugin?
psychoslave 2y ago
Genuine question: why don’t you started from VSCodium if the the VSCode is too much hassle to deal with?
- remedan 2y ago
  Isn't VSCodium built from the same source code as VSCode? Excluding a few proprietary things Microsoft puts into the official binaries.
consumerx 2y ago
most exciting is that it will run locally and we don't have to use middleman and give up our juicy data. lol
kemyd 2y ago
Great job! Can you share where the codebase prompts are listed? Maybe it is a valuable thing to learn
zero0529 2y ago
does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code
zero0529 2y ago
does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code?
enriquto 2y ago
Is this really "open source"? Can I download all source code and run it locally without internet connection?
- RMPR 2y ago
  > Can I download all source code and run it locally without internet connection? This is not what open source means.
  - enriquto 2y ago
    Well, of course, open source would mean that you can also download all the training data and re-do the training yourself.
    - bilekas 2y ago
      > open source would mean that you can also download all the training data and re-do the training yourself I don't think so.. Utilizing another data source, does not mean they're required, or even permitted in a lot of cases, to distribute that with their software/service.
- bilekas 2y ago
  If I create an MIT licensed RSS reader, distribute it on GitHub for everyone. That's open source, just because you need an internet connection doesn't preclude the 'open-source'-ness right.
  - enriquto 2y ago
    Sir, this is a text editor.
    - bilekas 2y ago
      I do understand your frustration but again to be pedantic, the type of software isn't conditional to how it's licensing will work. I think there is a good discussion to be had over the licensing of LLM's and the fruits of training data, as well as that of the training data itself, but when it comes to the software itself, it's hard to argue what is and isn't open source.
jakubmazanec 2y ago
Why the completely generic name, with meaning unrelated in any way to editors?
Myrmornis 2y ago
You mention refactoring. Do you hope to be able to merge new VScode improvements as they arise, or is this a hard fork that will diverge from VSCode from now on?
2024user 2y ago
So early stage that we can't download it? Why would I want to join a discord server for a code editor? What is the plan when VS Code introduces all your features?
- janekm 2y ago
  Well the code is there: https://github.com/voideditor/void/tree/main/extensions/void https://github.com/voideditor/void/tree/main/extensions/void But it's super basic right now... Like literally just the bare minimum to make an LLM call in a side window and a view to apply/reject diffs. Pretty much a weekend project at this point.
- szundi 2y ago
  Maybe that's the point. Who is going to be acquired by Microsoft and then just be part of VS Code?
indigodaddy 2y ago
My projects aren’t super complicated and just mostly Python/flask/htmx/html templates. I started with cursor during their free trial so I got the 500 sonnet prompts and it was pretty awesome. Then that ended and the remaining “free” models were fairly lacking. So I went a’hunting, and settled on the Codeium vscode plug-in free plan which while not as good as cursor/sonnet combination but is quite capable and their “free” models are capable enough for what I am working on (believe they even use a llama 3.1 model— I think they have various models, but left it on the “base model” and it’s been pretty good)
jbkkd 2y ago
Why is there a waiting list if it's open source?
- 3301_ 2y ago
  not fully stable yet you can build it yourself from github
a-ungurianu 2y ago
I’d love a good summary on why Cursor, Void (and I assume other tools) decided to build new editors instead of just extending the incumbents (VSCode extension, Jetbrains plugins). Is there a technical limitation of the extension APIs or is it easier to “market” a new editor than an editor extension? While adoption for individuals and small companies might be easy, a lot of bigger places already have other integrations with existing IDEs and displacing those for yet another IDE will be a hard ask
- elashri 2y ago
  Extracting from cursor team [1] > VSCode extensions have very limited control over the UI of the editor. Our Command-K and Copilot++ features aren’t possible as extensions. Same for much of what we want to build in the future! [1] https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-not-a-plugin/2448/2 https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-not-a-plugin/2448/2
  - Fluorescence 2y ago
    I don't fancy a future of multiple diverging VSCode forks. I wonder if they could have created a "Super Plugin" interface instead of a Cursor specific fork and try to get it merged to VSCode or VSCodium or at least keep as a new shared platform for deep customisation instead of balkanisation by everyone interested in doing something similar.
    - throwthrowuknow 2y ago
      Personally I prefer more forks and new editors. Leaving everything in Microsoft’s hands limits how quickly core features can be added. Let the best editor win.
      - KetoManx64 2y ago
        The issue is that the forks don't have the resources to focus on the security issues as they come up, and as the fork gets further and further away from the main project it becomes harder to merge the changes from the main project.
rmsaksida 2y ago
> All of the code is OOP-based, and they mount DOM nodes the old-school way (which is what React was supposed to solve..) I don't know about VS Code, but I remember Atom was refactored to use manual DOM updates because the performance penalty of using React wasn't worth it.[1] By the way, isn't OOP by far the most popular paradigm for building desktop UIs? I imagine VS Code is a difficult codebase to work with that has a lot of intricate code (as is usually the case with large software projects), but that's a strange piece of criticism :-) 1. https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624
- k__ 2y ago
  Always interesting to hear such claims when graphic editors like Penpot, which have much tighter perf requirements than editors, are so fast while using React.
  - rovr138 2y ago
    How do you implement a text editor? I think a lot of people don't consider how complex text editors are and then there are the complexities of an IDE, or extensions, to be able to interact with it. ropes? gap buffers? https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r... how vscode does it, - https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_table
    - k__ 2y ago
      I'm not saying text editors are on the last place in terms of perf requirements. I'm just saying, that general graphics editors is above that and do just fine with React.
- codelikeawolf 2y ago
  I have spent a great deal of time wading through the VS Code codebase and it takes OOP to the extreme. There are mile long inheritance chains, everything is a class, and it is a giant bowl of spaghetti. To some extent, I understand why they used that development approach. It doesn't use a UI framework, just DOM APIs, so classes make sense in lieu of components, but it's still bonkers. > By the way, isn't OOP by far the most popular paradigm for building desktop UIs? Yes, but I wish it wasn't. My day job is desktop development (with Electron), and I avoid OOP as much as I can and try to use a functional approach. After jumping all over the VS Code codebase to try to understand how some of this stuff works, and seeing how hard it is to navigate, I think heavy OOP is a bad idea.
hkc88hkc 2y ago
That's intriguing. I'd like to be a user.
lucasjans 2y ago
I want to build my own agents so I can my private domain specific awareness in the coding environment: PRDs, product docs, API docs, business goals, etc. I'm assuming I could point this to any API compatible endpoint and build my own agents?
sarthakdash 2y ago
> Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source so we (and Cursor) have to hack our way through it. For the marketplace, can you not use Open VSX [1]? [1] https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx
joshstrange 2y ago
> we're building Void as a fork of vscode Hard pass. Sorry but you can pry IDEA from my cold dead hands or at least VSCode doesn't hold a candle to it IMHO. And no, I'm not looking for a discussion on VSCode vs IDEA. Building a new code editor for a single feature is a dead end in my opinion.
singularity2001 2y ago
[flagged]
pzo 2y ago
there is also PearAI - "The Open Source AI-Powered Code Editor. A fork of VSCode and Continue." [0]. It's getting very crowded in this space: cursor.sh, continue.dev, double.bot, supermaven, codium.ai, PearAI and now Void. [0] - https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app
- wesleyyue 2y ago
  If you've tried others, would love to understand if there's anything you didn't like specifically (I'm one of the creators for https://double.bot https://double.bot)
  - pzo 2y ago
    I ended up actually not trying double.bot - overall I tried only cursor.sh (first with BYOK and now subscriber) and continue.dev (didn't manage to integrate own key from OpenRouter in JetBrains plugin). For me in the beginning one of the selling point is if I can bring my own key (ideally with GUI setup instead of some config file and working with OpenRouter key). Then if something is open source is also a selling point. I would recommend update double.bot landing page to have all features shown in few gifs on the same page and 'show in action' short video' - continue.dev had actually pretty good landing page. CodeSnap is probably something similar like cursors' 'apply' but double.bot landing page feels more like documentation. Also at this stage probably worth to add additional comparison to cursor same like you have for copilot
    - geepytee 2y ago
      Just added 'build a new landing page' to my to-do, appreciate the feedback! Anything else we could do to make double.bot a more compelling option for you?
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Ughh. I'm tired of these open source vc backed companies. Can't wait for this meta to die out.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
I wish someone would fork Omnivim2 instead in order to better compete with VS Code. The editor looks like VS Code, but it is natively compiled and supports VS Code plugins is my understanding. Unfortunately the project seems abandoned. Its coded in ReasonML. I'm sick of dev tools being built around web browsers. We used to have fully native apps in the 90s and 00s that didn't require so much complexity compared to today. Edit: Forgot to mention that it also is powered by vim under the hood, but that's a strength in my eyes. https://github.com/onivim/oni2 https://github.com/onivim/oni2
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sscarduzio 2y ago
Don’t listen to the naysayers: this can be Dropbox all over again! I love Cursor but, it’s a pity it’s not OSS. The success of Void is tied to how well you implement the part in which AI reasons about multiple files. This is where all the sauce is in Cursor at the moment imo.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
Honestly, I'd rather have a buggish extension than having to change editor.
hacke2 2y ago
[dead]
prmoustache 2y ago
When I see "Waitlist" and "Discord" on a website, my immediate reaction is to close the tab and forget about the project. And well, complain about it on hn obviously.
pratio 2y ago
The repository contains the full source code but there's a waitlist to download? Why?

347 points by andrewpareles 2y ago

storafrid 2y ago

Hi, thanks for sharing. A question: What is the advantage of this approach compared to the tool I'm using right now - continue.dev ?

nextworddev 2y ago

Cursor needs some competition. Their generation quality fell off a cliff recently as they are doing behind the scenes product optimizations with LLMs

maeil 2y ago
I'm not sure why SourceGraph is struggling so much that I have to do it for them (maybe the name?), but Cody is competition and has the benefit of being an extension instead of a fork.

MacsHeadroom 2y ago

Tried the get in touch link, but the Google form says I need permission to view it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mp5 2y ago
Should be fixed now!

BoorishBears 2y ago

I'm surprised no one in targeting Jetbrains IDEs as seriously as Cursor has targeted vscode. I'd imagine Jetbrains users are much more willing to pay, and the non-AI intelligence Webstorm has baked in save me almost as much cognitive load as Cursor does if not more compared to base vscode. I tried Continue but it wasn't very smooth at all.

bilekas 2y ago
Jetbrains isn't open source and this seems to be a fork of vscode, not an extension so there's a bit more control on what's being done here. Edit : This is only my guess, I have no internal knowledge of Cursor.
- kevo1ution 2y ago
  Intellij community edition is open source, but not the enterprise version. However, CE is pretty feature rich with a ton of users and if you're targeting indie developers, most are on CE anyways. I'd say if you do Intellij, you have to be in for the long game to build up to enterprise, but its doable.
  - bilekas 2y ago
    That's interesting actually, I didn't know they even had a community edition but as I am reading anyway it seem it supports only Android, Swing, and JavaFX. That's quite a limitation no?
kkarpkkarp 2y ago
Supermaven[1] has addons for vscode as well for jetbrains (and neovim). And it is so good that I quickly decided for their paid plan [1] https://supermaven.com/ https://supermaven.com/
- hboon 2y ago
  They have announced they are building an editor; so while I'm a subscriber, I'm not sure how long the plugins will last

prasoonds 2y ago

This is cool! I'm a regular user of Cursor (I barely write any code now - just prompt and tab tab tab). The thing that's really keeping me in Cursor (vs decamping for Zed) is NOT the Cmd K or the sidebar chat. It's actual Cursor's Tab autocomplete model. I've tried many other tab completion models and Cursor Tab blows them out of the water. Supermaven's new release is promising, however. For the use-case you're solving for (issues with code-privacy), I think something like https://codeium.com/ https://codeium.com/ does already allow for on-prem deployments with enterprise support. I'm trying to think of who would be served well by a fork of VSCode vs Continue.dev or something like a codeium VPS deployment.

thih9 2y ago
Curious: what is your use case for cursor, i.e. what is the problem domain or complexity level (on a scale from boilerplate code to core architecture) that you typically work with? Also what plan are you on and is that enough for your needs?
- prasoonds 2y ago
  Hi, we're working with an large typescript codebase and I develop fully fledged features with Cursor which involve non-trivial UI wiring up work. Decent amount of state management using React too. It's definitely not boilerplate level code - but it also also stops well short of architecture level work. Here's a recent prompt of me trying to implement line-by-line diff generation: https://pastebin.com/WRJpNwqc https://pastebin.com/WRJpNwqc When I need to do architectural/design work, I do it in multiple passes, not generating any code, just lots detailed text with tons of feedback/back-and-forth with the model. I'm on the pro plan but it's not enough for my needs - I run through the quota in 10-15 days. Then, I revert to using Sonnet 3.5 via API key.
boomskats 2y ago
Big fan of Codeium here. They're the only player who took vim/neovim users seriously from the start, and it's great to see people building extensions like monkoose/neocodeium. Their models or ux may not always be the best available, but their understanding of their target market and their product positioning is peak IMO, particularly the enterprise/on-prem options you mentioned. My money's on them long-term.

boomskats 2y ago

Congrats on getting it this far! The fun is just beginning, but it does sound like you have an idea of what you're getting into. Here are some thoughts: There are quite a few extensions and AI editors offering the snippet-like 'tab autocomplete', but Cursor are the only ones afaik who have nailed the full file no-look 'tab-tab-tab-tab autofix' workflow, with what I assume must be a combination of monaco/vscode hackery similar to what you're doing, and their own tuned model (i.e. not an off-the-shelf llm). Is this the piece you're going after when you say 'all of Cursor's core features', or are you primarily focused on something else? On the topic of extensions, as an occasional user of Cursor I noticed that they've always been able to quite happily 'import' extensions you've already downloaded to a local VSCode profile, which makes sense, but they've occasionally struggled to use the same marketplace APIs for searching for extensions. I'm not sure what you're hoping for here, but I'd suggest you settle for that approach as a starting point. Also be conscious that you're dealing with Microsoft, so be mindful of things like their brand guidelines[0], and avoid telling the world that you're 'hacking away' at their APIs. These things may seem insignificant and it's true that they probably won't cause you a problem unless you're successful. Lastly, assuming that you're hoping to recruit contributors (which I assume is some of the motivation behind this post): you really need to sanitise your Github workflow and your repo CI. Your commit history[1] currently seems to mostly consist of you updating your docs and committing straight to your main branch with no review process or checks, and the only commit I can see that does have any kind of check in place, your initial commit, has a failed monaco check that you seem to have subsequently just disabled. You'll need to tidy this up a _lot_ and establish a testing baseline if you want to successfully scale the project or attract the calibre of contributor you'll need to be successful. Hope that helps, best of luck with the project! [0]: https://code.visualstudio.com/brand https://code.visualstudio.com/brand [1]: https://github.com/voideditor/void/commits/main/ https://github.com/voideditor/void/commits/main/

dan_man 2y ago
That is the only reason I use Cursor. The autocomplete is way too good. For refactors, it's just magic! I tried using VSCode after using Cursor for a whole month and Copilot is just straight trash in comparison. I'd like to continue using Cursor but I'm don't want to have to buy Claude subscription twice (Cursor uses claude under the hood), and I prefer claude sonnet over chat-gpt.

boomskats 2y ago

Seems to be a dupe of another Show HN post posted by the same user 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41523197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41523197

kevo1ution 2y ago
launched twice? gotta launch as much as possible in this competitive landscape
- lagniappe 2y ago
  If you're not shipping, you're slipping
  - yard2010 2y ago
    And if you're slipping you can't dip in
mp5 2y ago
We did a smaller launch a few days ago, but we've actually made a lot of changes to our github contributing page, website, logo since then (based on the feedback). Just trying to ship fast, haha.
- boomskats 2y ago
  I only just realised you're YC-backed. Makes sense, glhf
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  Doesn't sound like it warrants another post.
  - debo_ 2y ago
    Given that this one is getting traction, I think it indeed warranted another post.

kevo1ution 2y ago

My primary usage of cursor is cmd+L and cmd+K, I'll give it a shot. Also, makes sense to make an open source alternative. How do you plan on monetizing?

mp5 2y ago
We plan on selling to enterprise companies. We know a lot of companies want to keep their repos private and so we offer them on-prem hosting options. Closed source tools can't really do this because they have to keep their prompt building algorithms behind a private API that they own. This seems to work pretty well for Codeium, which offers its product free to consumers (at a loss), and is still able to make net profit from enterprise companies. At least that's the plan for now!
- lagniappe 2y ago
  >We know a lot of companies want to keep their repos private and so we offer them on-prem hosting options. Is there anything more than this?
- kevo1ution 2y ago
  makes sense! Excited for y'all

cvzakharchenko 2y ago

Oh, I’m yet to find a good alternative to Cursor’s RAG-powered side chat. It helps me work with huge codebases so much. Tried Continue, but it’s very unstable, and doesn’t work as well. Would prefer a command line solution, vscode plugin is the next choice, having a separate editor is not ideal, but I’m glad there’s some competition.

kvakkefly 2y ago
Not sure if this is what you'd like, but I remember this repo from some time ago https://github.com/Storia-AI/sage https://github.com/Storia-AI/sage Storia-AI/sage: Chat with any codebase with 2 commands
- cvzakharchenko 2y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion! It needs some work to set up, and it looks like it only works on Github repos. Also, to work with non-local LLMs, you can only use Pinecone for vector storage. I might have misunderstood something, but I will check it out again later.
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fredoliveira 2y ago
> Would prefer a command line solution I haven't tried this myself so I apologize if it ends up being bad, but I've seen Aider [0] get linked a few times from people who wanted a CLI solution for AI code completion. [0]: https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/
- cvzakharchenko 2y ago
  Aider is really cool for small projects, but it builds a repo map instead of using RAG. That works on small codebases, but totally fails to be useful on large ones.
  - 2y ago

rhardih 2y ago

If anyone can point in the direction of a Cursor like experience, but within Neovim, I'm definitely in the market for that option.

tmerse 2y ago
- https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim - https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim Did not have the time to test them yet and there are probably more.
deleted 2y ago
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j0e1 2y ago

As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals. However, I found Theia (https://theia-ide.org https://theia-ide.org) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on this site) and find it a much better fit for our OSS goals (foundation owned, open-source marketplace) with full mod-ability while being compatible to VSCode extensions API (in theory). I recommend you look into it for your app.

aswerty 2y ago
Is Theia related to Eclipse (the traditional Java IDE)? Or is the reference to "eclipse" just an unfortunate naming collision?
- einsteinx2 2y ago
  They created it, but the code base is unrelated.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  Theia is the Monaco editor from VS Code with a different ui
- chikei 2y ago
  It's made by Eclipse Foundation which was created to host projects around Eclipse the IDE. Kind of like project under Apache brand, Apache foundation and Apache the HTTP server.
tristan957 2y ago
You can publish your extensions on OpenVSX fyi. A lot of projects have started doing that now. Not all, but a good amount. Glad you found Theia though.
- wesleyyue 2y ago

ac130kz 2y ago

Good job at creating more competition, but sorry for being a little bit rude, most software forks die out, try to convince me using this instead of Continue + Claude-dev, which are open source extensions for the vanilla VSCode (or VSCodium). >Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source Ehm, Open VSX Registry exists.

replete 2y ago
Are you using a local model with Continue?
- ac130kz 2y ago
  I've tried running 3B LLAMA on my old machine and it was sluggish and kinda bad, but Claude 3.5 Sonnet works great. I will try the 70B model, should be good enough.
  - dartos 2y ago
    Yeah, I’ve found local models are completely useless for coding tasks whereas openai and Claude can at least do some refactors with guidance
  - replete 2y ago
    I didn't have much success with ollama either. You really need a great accelerator for it to be useful enough. Codestral however is working out great so thanks for the tip.

lagniappe 2y ago

Hey congrats on the release. I don't have much to add other than to ask for more context about this statement- > allowing AI to edit multiple files at once Cursor already modifies multiple files at the same time. I typically do this by pressing cmd+shift+I and in the left side of the window the required files will be shown as they're being modified.

nunobrito 2y ago

Plus points if keeping the tool free for home/OSS users and then charge for corporate or on-premise deployments. One critical question to the users: Is Void able to understand the source code files from the project as a whole? What I mean is being able to read the project, and then make suggestions based on the code that was written and propose new functions? For example, I would see it as fantastic to write unit tests where I'd say: "Please write a unit test that is verifying the functions on ABC.class" or "update the unit tests for ABC.class". I know it is difficult for an LLM to create a valid result on the first try, but at least it does same me a lot of time creating a skeleton with most of the functions and samples already there. Most times just have to fine tune or fix a few parts but can say it amplifies my output speed by at least 10x to have that kind of functionality. What is your impression? Can it read all source code files on the project?

bluelightning2k 2y ago

Why is this a Show HN not a launch HN? Is it simply a concept and not yet fleshed out? Hard sell to choose you especially as a full on editor replacement (as well as a copilot replacement) without a demo or even gifs.

Terretta 2y ago
Waitlist.

blindluck 2y ago

Why are so many coding assistant forks? Is it fashion or is there a technical reason? Imagine Python support being a fork. Or live server.

dsmurrell 2y ago
Because it's hard to reimplement VSCode from scratch?
- blindluck 2y ago
  VSCode has plugins
  - andypants 2y ago
    They are making changes that cannot be done or are very difficult with vscode extensions
    - blindluck 2y ago
      What might they be? API calls, read all files, write to files, side bar, UI interactions in editor. These are things I would imagine an extension can do. Continue.dev is an example.

oliwarner 2y ago

Do you need to "own" the whole editor to do what you're doing? Just maintaining sync with upstream is a massive rod for your own back, and I don't see what you gain. As others have said, alternative registries exist, and installation instructions of standalone plugins are easier on users than downloading and installing a whole editor. Can't you just do your own "Copilot" extension and plumb in an instance to ollama? Isn't that what Continue does? https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Continue.continue https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Continue...

dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
- dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]

elAhmo 2y ago

This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev perfectly exemplifies the VC spray-and-pray approach by backing two nearly identical open-source VSCode plugins for AI-assisted coding. They're simply throwing money at similar projects in the same space, hoping one will stick, without any special insight or reason why one should be more successful over another.

mft_ 2y ago
I’m interested; are you suggested this is a bad thing, or just highlighting something of interest?
- elAhmo 2y ago
  Not a bad thing, but just a reflection that among some of these products there is nothing special when compared to rest of the bunch, there are very similar products (even backed by the same investor), and us users have no clear idea what is different between them, if anything, and why we should use one over another. I guess similar theme can be seen in LLM/AI space in general, or previously in the streaming services, just throw as much money at the problem in the hope that your solution will stick, without any significant and clear differentiation.
re-thc 2y ago
> This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev Oh there's a lot more than that.
- elAhmo 2y ago
  Just the two that I have recently been checking out and, as many other commenters in this thread asked, what is the difference between the two? I guess investors know something we don't, or they are just throwing money at the wall...
rmbyrro 2y ago
This is VC operations by design since forever. Heck, even centuries ago, they'd fund multiple ship crews to navigate the Earth, hoping one would find smth interesting. It's the model that works in high-risk, high-reward endeavors.

rie_t 2y ago

I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible. Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?

qeternity 2y ago
Because it's difficult to monetize extensions and justify a large VC valuation... (Void is HN backed)
- mritchie712 2y ago
  Are you HN backed when your Show HN gets over 200 votes?
  - promiseofbeans 2y ago
    The linked website says "Backed by Y Combinator" lol
candiddevmike 2y ago
Idk, continue is absolute trash at the moment. It manages to break my entire VScode environment, including vim hotkeys.
d4rkp4ttern 2y ago
A lot of folks prefer JetBrains over VSC. For example my top choice for an AI Editor today is Zed.dev which lets you trivially setup to use a variety of key maps including JetBrains. https://zed.dev/ https://zed.dev/
- replete 2y ago
  Zed looks promising, I'm waiting on editorconfig support PR to drop
  - 2y ago

Tepix 2y ago

> Any LLM, Anywhere. > Host your own models locally, or communicate directly with your favorites. Looks fantastic, will happily try this!

Sauravsingh6 2y ago

release date?

jmartin2683 2y ago

It’s just been so long since going from ‘head to code’ has been the hard part for me. I’d imagine you have to be very unfamiliar for this to be useful.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fathomas 2y ago

But why does it have to be a VSCode fork? Couldn’t it be a VSCode plugin?

psychoslave 2y ago

Genuine question: why don’t you started from VSCodium if the the VSCode is too much hassle to deal with?

remedan 2y ago
Isn't VSCodium built from the same source code as VSCode? Excluding a few proprietary things Microsoft puts into the official binaries.

consumerx 2y ago

most exciting is that it will run locally and we don't have to use middleman and give up our juicy data. lol

kemyd 2y ago

Great job! Can you share where the codebase prompts are listed? Maybe it is a valuable thing to learn

zero0529 2y ago

does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code

zero0529 2y ago

does it support, ssh workspaces like vs code?

enriquto 2y ago

Is this really "open source"? Can I download all source code and run it locally without internet connection?

RMPR 2y ago
> Can I download all source code and run it locally without internet connection? This is not what open source means.
- enriquto 2y ago
  Well, of course, open source would mean that you can also download all the training data and re-do the training yourself.
  - bilekas 2y ago
    > open source would mean that you can also download all the training data and re-do the training yourself I don't think so.. Utilizing another data source, does not mean they're required, or even permitted in a lot of cases, to distribute that with their software/service.
bilekas 2y ago
If I create an MIT licensed RSS reader, distribute it on GitHub for everyone. That's open source, just because you need an internet connection doesn't preclude the 'open-source'-ness right.
- enriquto 2y ago
  Sir, this is a text editor.
  - bilekas 2y ago
    I do understand your frustration but again to be pedantic, the type of software isn't conditional to how it's licensing will work. I think there is a good discussion to be had over the licensing of LLM's and the fruits of training data, as well as that of the training data itself, but when it comes to the software itself, it's hard to argue what is and isn't open source.

jakubmazanec 2y ago

Why the completely generic name, with meaning unrelated in any way to editors?

Myrmornis 2y ago

You mention refactoring. Do you hope to be able to merge new VScode improvements as they arise, or is this a hard fork that will diverge from VSCode from now on?

2024user 2y ago

So early stage that we can't download it? Why would I want to join a discord server for a code editor? What is the plan when VS Code introduces all your features?

janekm 2y ago
Well the code is there: https://github.com/voideditor/void/tree/main/extensions/void https://github.com/voideditor/void/tree/main/extensions/void But it's super basic right now... Like literally just the bare minimum to make an LLM call in a side window and a view to apply/reject diffs. Pretty much a weekend project at this point.
szundi 2y ago
Maybe that's the point. Who is going to be acquired by Microsoft and then just be part of VS Code?

indigodaddy 2y ago

My projects aren’t super complicated and just mostly Python/flask/htmx/html templates. I started with cursor during their free trial so I got the 500 sonnet prompts and it was pretty awesome. Then that ended and the remaining “free” models were fairly lacking. So I went a’hunting, and settled on the Codeium vscode plug-in free plan which while not as good as cursor/sonnet combination but is quite capable and their “free” models are capable enough for what I am working on (believe they even use a llama 3.1 model— I think they have various models, but left it on the “base model” and it’s been pretty good)

jbkkd 2y ago

Why is there a waiting list if it's open source?

3301_ 2y ago
not fully stable yet you can build it yourself from github

a-ungurianu 2y ago

I’d love a good summary on why Cursor, Void (and I assume other tools) decided to build new editors instead of just extending the incumbents (VSCode extension, Jetbrains plugins). Is there a technical limitation of the extension APIs or is it easier to “market” a new editor than an editor extension? While adoption for individuals and small companies might be easy, a lot of bigger places already have other integrations with existing IDEs and displacing those for yet another IDE will be a hard ask

elashri 2y ago
Extracting from cursor team [1] > VSCode extensions have very limited control over the UI of the editor. Our Command-K and Copilot++ features aren’t possible as extensions. Same for much of what we want to build in the future! [1] https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-not-a-plugin/2448/2 https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-not-a-plugin/2448/2
- Fluorescence 2y ago
  I don't fancy a future of multiple diverging VSCode forks. I wonder if they could have created a "Super Plugin" interface instead of a Cursor specific fork and try to get it merged to VSCode or VSCodium or at least keep as a new shared platform for deep customisation instead of balkanisation by everyone interested in doing something similar.
  - throwthrowuknow 2y ago
    Personally I prefer more forks and new editors. Leaving everything in Microsoft’s hands limits how quickly core features can be added. Let the best editor win.
    - KetoManx64 2y ago
      The issue is that the forks don't have the resources to focus on the security issues as they come up, and as the fork gets further and further away from the main project it becomes harder to merge the changes from the main project.

rmsaksida 2y ago

> All of the code is OOP-based, and they mount DOM nodes the old-school way (which is what React was supposed to solve..) I don't know about VS Code, but I remember Atom was refactored to use manual DOM updates because the performance penalty of using React wasn't worth it.[1] By the way, isn't OOP by far the most popular paradigm for building desktop UIs? I imagine VS Code is a difficult codebase to work with that has a lot of intricate code (as is usually the case with large software projects), but that's a strange piece of criticism :-) 1. https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624 https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624

k__ 2y ago
Always interesting to hear such claims when graphic editors like Penpot, which have much tighter perf requirements than editors, are so fast while using React.
- rovr138 2y ago
  How do you implement a text editor? I think a lot of people don't consider how complex text editors are and then there are the complexities of an IDE, or extensions, to be able to interact with it. ropes? gap buffers? https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r... how vscode does it, - https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_table
  - k__ 2y ago
    I'm not saying text editors are on the last place in terms of perf requirements. I'm just saying, that general graphics editors is above that and do just fine with React.
codelikeawolf 2y ago
I have spent a great deal of time wading through the VS Code codebase and it takes OOP to the extreme. There are mile long inheritance chains, everything is a class, and it is a giant bowl of spaghetti. To some extent, I understand why they used that development approach. It doesn't use a UI framework, just DOM APIs, so classes make sense in lieu of components, but it's still bonkers. > By the way, isn't OOP by far the most popular paradigm for building desktop UIs? Yes, but I wish it wasn't. My day job is desktop development (with Electron), and I avoid OOP as much as I can and try to use a functional approach. After jumping all over the VS Code codebase to try to understand how some of this stuff works, and seeing how hard it is to navigate, I think heavy OOP is a bad idea.

hkc88hkc 2y ago

That's intriguing. I'd like to be a user.

lucasjans 2y ago

I want to build my own agents so I can my private domain specific awareness in the coding environment: PRDs, product docs, API docs, business goals, etc. I'm assuming I could point this to any API compatible endpoint and build my own agents?

sarthakdash 2y ago

> Microsoft also made its extension marketplace closed-source so we (and Cursor) have to hack our way through it. For the marketplace, can you not use Open VSX [1]? [1] https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx

joshstrange 2y ago

> we're building Void as a fork of vscode Hard pass. Sorry but you can pry IDEA from my cold dead hands or at least VSCode doesn't hold a candle to it IMHO. And no, I'm not looking for a discussion on VSCode vs IDEA. Building a new code editor for a single feature is a dead end in my opinion.

singularity2001 2y ago

[flagged]

pzo 2y ago

there is also PearAI - "The Open Source AI-Powered Code Editor. A fork of VSCode and Continue." [0]. It's getting very crowded in this space: cursor.sh, continue.dev, double.bot, supermaven, codium.ai, PearAI and now Void. [0] - https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app https://github.com/trypear/pearai-app

wesleyyue 2y ago
If you've tried others, would love to understand if there's anything you didn't like specifically (I'm one of the creators for https://double.bot https://double.bot)
- pzo 2y ago
  I ended up actually not trying double.bot - overall I tried only cursor.sh (first with BYOK and now subscriber) and continue.dev (didn't manage to integrate own key from OpenRouter in JetBrains plugin). For me in the beginning one of the selling point is if I can bring my own key (ideally with GUI setup instead of some config file and working with OpenRouter key). Then if something is open source is also a selling point. I would recommend update double.bot landing page to have all features shown in few gifs on the same page and 'show in action' short video' - continue.dev had actually pretty good landing page. CodeSnap is probably something similar like cursors' 'apply' but double.bot landing page feels more like documentation. Also at this stage probably worth to add additional comparison to cursor same like you have for copilot
  - geepytee 2y ago
    Just added 'build a new landing page' to my to-do, appreciate the feedback! Anything else we could do to make double.bot a more compelling option for you?

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

Ughh. I'm tired of these open source vc backed companies. Can't wait for this meta to die out.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

I wish someone would fork Omnivim2 instead in order to better compete with VS Code. The editor looks like VS Code, but it is natively compiled and supports VS Code plugins is my understanding. Unfortunately the project seems abandoned. Its coded in ReasonML. I'm sick of dev tools being built around web browsers. We used to have fully native apps in the 90s and 00s that didn't require so much complexity compared to today. Edit: Forgot to mention that it also is powered by vim under the hood, but that's a strength in my eyes. https://github.com/onivim/oni2 https://github.com/onivim/oni2

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sscarduzio 2y ago

Don’t listen to the naysayers: this can be Dropbox all over again! I love Cursor but, it’s a pity it’s not OSS. The success of Void is tied to how well you implement the part in which AI reasons about multiple files. This is where all the sauce is in Cursor at the moment imo.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

Honestly, I'd rather have a buggish extension than having to change editor.

hacke2 2y ago

[dead]

prmoustache 2y ago

When I see "Waitlist" and "Discord" on a website, my immediate reaction is to close the tab and forget about the project. And well, complain about it on hn obviously.

pratio 2y ago

The repository contains the full source code but there's a waitlist to download? Why?