7 ms·

It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. Curious how this compares to others like Cline, VS Code Copilot's Agent mode, Roo

It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. Curious how this compares to others like Cline, VS Code Copilot's Agent mode, Roo Code, Kilo Code, Zed, etc. Not to mention those that are closed source, CLI based, etc. Any standout features?

jadbox 1y ago
My 2c: I rarely need agent mode. As an older engineer, I usually know what exactly needs to be done and have no problem describing to the LLM what to do to solve what I'm aiming to do. Agent mode seems its more for novice developers who are unsure what tasks need to be broken down and the strategy that they are then solved.
- ivape 1y ago
  "Novice mode" has always been true for the newcomer. When I was new, I really was at the mercy of: 1) Authority (whatever a prominent evangelist developer was peddling) 2) The book I was following as a guide 3) The tutorial I was following as a guide 4) The consensus of the crowd at the time 5) Whatever worked (SO, brute force, whatever library, whatever magic) It took a long ass time before I got to throw all five of those things out (throw the map away). At the moment, #5 on that list is AI (whatever works). It's a Rite of Passage, and because so much of being a developer involves autodidacticism, this is a valley you must go through. Even so, it's pretty cool when you make it out of that valley (you can do whatever you want without any anxiety about is this the right path?). You are never fearful or lost in the valley(s) for the most part afterward.
  - boredtofears 1y ago
    If you use AI agents for all your work as a novice do you ever make it out of the valley?
    - ivape 1y ago
      Yeah. Most people have not deployed enough critical code that was mostly written with AI. It's when that stuff breaks, and they have to debug it with AI, that's when they'll have to contend with the blood, sweat, and tears. That's when the person will swear that they'll never use AI again. The thing is, we can never not use AI ever again. So, this is the trial by fire where many will figure out the depth of the valley and emerge from it with all the lessons. I can only speculate, but I suspect the lessons will be something along the lines of "some things should use less AI than others". I think it's a cool journey, best of luck to the AI-first crowd, you will learn lessons the rest of us are not brave enough to embark on. I already have a basket of lessons, so I travel differently through the valley (hint: My ship still has a helm).
      - juliushuijnk 1y ago
        > that's when they'll have to contend with the blood, sweat, and tears. Or, most software will become immutable. You'll just replace it. You'll throw away the mess, and let a newer LLM build a better version in a couple of days. You ask the LLM to write down the specs for the newer version based on the old code. If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind.
        ivape 1y ago
        If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind. Not even, devoured might be more apt. If I'm manually moving through this valley and a flood is coming through, those who are sticking automatic propellers and navigation systems on their ship are going to be the ones that can surf the flood and come out of the valley. We don't know, this is literally the adventure. I'm personally on the side of a hybrid approach. It's fun as hell, best of luck to everyone. It's in poor taste to bring up this example, but I'll mention it as softly as I can. There were some people that went down looking for the Titanic recently. It could have worked, you know what I mean? These are risks we all take. Quoting the Admiral from Starcraft Broodwars cinematic (I'm a learned person): "... You must go into this with both eyes open"
- dakiol 1y ago
  Same here. It’s fine for me to use the ChatGPT web interface and switch between it and my IDE/editor. Context switching is not the bottleneck. I actually like to go away from the IDE/keyboard to think through problems in a different environment (so a voice version of chatgpt that I can talk to via my smartwatch while walking and see some answers either on my smartglasses or via sound would be ideal… I don’t really need more screen (monitor) time)
  - DoesntMatter22 1y ago
    Man that workflow is brutal
  - divan 1y ago
    I use voice mode of ChatGPT almost exclusively using RayBan metaglasses(especially when outside / cyciling).
  - jjani 1y ago
    You would like to, or you're actually doing that right now?
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    > Same here. It’s fine for me to use the ChatGPT web interface and switch between it and my IDE/editor. I do this all the time, and I am completely fine with it. Sure, I need to pay more attention, but I think it does more good than harm.
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    Sorry to say but this workflow just isn't great unless you're working on something where AI models aren't that helpful -- obscure language/libraries/etc where they hallucinate or write non-idiomatic solutions if left to run much by themselves. In that case, you want the strong human review loop that comes from crafting the context via copy paste and inspecting the results before copying back. For well trodden paths that AI is good at, you're wasting a ton of time copying context and lint/typechecking/test results and copying back edits. You could probably double your productivity by having an agentic coding workflow in the background doing stuff that's easy while you manually focus on harder problems, or just managing two agents that are working on easy code.
- fellowmartian 1y ago
  I’m a senior engineer and I find myself using agents all the time. Working on huge codebases or experimenting with different languages and technologies makes everybody “novice”.
  - azinman2 1y ago
    Can you give some examples of how you use it? I'm used to asking for very specific things, but less so full on agent mode.
    - hadlock 1y ago
      Agent mode seems to be better at realizing all the places in the code base that need to be updated, particularly if the feature touches 5+ files, whereas editor starts to struggle with features that touch 2-3 files. "every 60 ticks, predict which items should get cached based on user direction of travel, then fetch, transform and cache them. when new items need to be drawn, check the cache first and draw from there, otherwise fetch and transform on demand." this touches the core engine, user movement, file operations, graphics etc and agent mode seems to have no problem with this at all.
    - maronato 1y ago
      Personally, I’ve found agents to be a great “multitasking” tool. Let’s say I make a few changes in the code that will require changes or additions to tests. I give the agent the test command I want it to run and the files to read, and let it cycle between running tests and modifying files. While it’s doing that, I open Slack or do whatever else I need to do. After a few minutes, I come back, review the agent’s changes, fix anything that needs to be fixed or give it further instructions, and move to the next thing.
      - andrewpareles 1y ago
        I think a good use of time while waiting for an LLM is to ask another LLM for something. Until then Slack will do :)
- SkyBelow 1y ago
  One benefit is when working on multiple code bases where the size of the code base is larger than the time spent working on it, so there is still a gap of knowledge. Agents don't guarantee the correctness of a search the same an old search field does, but it offers a much more expressive way to do searches and queries in a code base. Now that I think about it, I might have only ever used agents for searching and answering questions, not for producing code. Perhaps I don't trust the AI to build a good enough structure, so while I'll use AI, it is one file at a time sort of interaction where I see every change it makes. I should probably try out one of these agent based models for a throw away project just to get more anecdotes to base my opinion on.
- volkk 1y ago
  kind of ironic, because the novices are the ones that absolutely should be doing things by hand to get better at the craft.
  - skeledrew 1y ago
    The day will come when only a few need to be "better at the craft". Just as with Assembly and even C.
    - spookie 1y ago
      C is still in the top 5 most used languages by any metric.
    - volkk 1y ago
      no one writes assembly, but good engineers still understand how things work under the hood
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  I dont agree. I use agents all the time. I say exactly what the agent should do but often changes need to be made in more than one place in the code base. Could I prompt it for every change one at a time per file? Sure, but it is faster do prompt an agent for it.
- rcarmo 1y ago
  Considering that Agent Mode saves me a lot of hassle doing refactoring ("move the handler to file X and review imports", "check where this constant is used and replace it with <another> for <these cases>", etc.), I'd say you are missing the point... I actually flip things - I do the breakdown myself in a SPEC.md file and then have the agent work through it. Markdown checklists work great, and the agent can usually update/expand them as it goes.
- SkyPuncher 1y ago
  I couldn't use AI code without agentic mode. At it's most basic, agentic mode is necessary for building the proper context. While I might know the solution at the high level, I need the agent to explore the code base to find things I reference and bring them into context before writing code. Agentic mode is also super helpful for getting LLMs from "99%" correct code to "100%" correct code. I'll ask them to do something to verify their work. This is often when the agent realizes it hallucinated a method name or used a directionally correct, but wrong column name.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- neutronicus 1y ago
  My main interest in agent mode is deputizing the C++ compiler to tell the LLM about everything it has hallucinated.
- mulmen 1y ago
  I think this perspective is better characterized as “solo” and not “old”. I don’t think your age is relevant here. Senior engineers are not necessarily old but have the experience to delegate manageable tasks to peers including juniors and collaborate with stakeholders. They’re part of an organization by definition. They’re senior to their peers in terms of experience or knowledge, not age. Agentic AIs slot into this pattern easily. If you are a solo dev you may not find this valuable. If you are a senior then you probably do.
- pdntspa 1y ago
  20yrs engineer here, all my life I've dreamed of having something that I could ask general questions about a codebase to and get back a cohesive, useful answer. And that future is now.
  - econ 1y ago
    I would put it more generic. I love that one can now ask as many dumb questions as it takes about anything. With humans there is this point where even the most patient teacher has to move on to do other things. Learning is best when one is curios about something and curiosity is more often specific. (When generic one can just read the manual)
behnamoh 1y ago
The difference is this one is backed by Y Combinator.
- glitchc 1y ago
  Does this mean "open source" is really "market capture before becoming closed-source"?
  - dang 1y ago
    I've been at many open source meetups with YC founders and can tell you that this is not the thinking at all. Rather, the emphasis is on finding a good carve-line between the open source offering and the (eventual) paid one, so that both sides are viable and can thrive. Most common these days is to make the paid product be a hosted version of the open source software, but there are other ways too. Experienced founders emphasize to new startups how important it is to get this right and to keep your open source community happy. No one I've heard is treating open source like a bait and switch; quite the opposite. What is sought is a win-win where each component (open source and paid) does better because of the other.
    - danenania 1y ago
      Exactly right. I think there’s a general misconception out there that open sourcing will cannibalize your hosted product business if you make it too easy to run. But in practice, there’s not a lot of overlap between people who want to self-host and people who want cloud. Most people who want cloud still want it even if they can self-host with a single command.
  - mp5 1y ago
    One of the founders here - Void will always remain open source! There are plenty of examples of an open source alternative finding its own niche (eg Supabase, Mattermost) and we don't see this being any different.
    - dcreater 1y ago
kristopolous 1y ago
Void has been around since last year. I'm working on an agnostic unified framework to make contexts transferrable between these tools. This will permit zero friction, zero interruption transitions without any code modification. Should have something to show by next week. Hit me up if you're interested in working on this problem - I'm tired of cowboying my projects.
cryptoz 1y ago
Yup - honestly the space is so open right now still, everyone is trying haha. It's got quite hard to keep track of different models and their strengths / weaknesses, much less the IDE and editor space! I have no idea which of these AI editors would suite me best and a new one comes out like every day. I'm still in vim with copilot and know I'm missing out. Anyway I'm also adding to the problem as I've got my own too (don't we all?!), at https://codeplusequalsai.com https://codeplusequalsai.com. Coded in vim 'cause I can't decide on an editor!
- jmvldz 1y ago
  This is cool! I like that you have a visual element for the agent working on multiple tickets at a time.
  - cryptoz 1y ago
    Thanks! And yeah, it really is satisfying watching the tickets move from column to column "all on their own" as the works gets done!
dheera 1y ago
The weird thing is, the biggest reason I don't use Cursor much is because they just distribute this AppImage, which doesn't install or add itself to the Ubuntu app menu, it just sits there and I have to do sudo chmod 755 path/to/Cursor-0.48.6.x86_64.AppImage path/to/Cursor-0.48.6.x86_64.AppImage and then I get greeted with an error message: The setuid sandbox is not running as root. Common causes: * An unprivileged process using ptrace on it, like a debugger. * A parent process set prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, ...) Failed to move to new namespace: PID namespaces supported, Network namespace supported, but failed: errno = Operation not permitted I have to go Googling, then realize I have to run it with bin/appimage/Cursor-0.48.6-x86_64.AppImage --no-sandbox Often I'm lazy to do all of this and just use the Claude / ChatGPT web version and paste code back and forth to VS code. The effort required to start Cursor is the reason I don't use it much. VS code is an actual, bona fide installed app with an icon that sits on my screen, I just click it to launch it. So much easier. Even if I have to write code manually.
- pineaux 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Not only did you mess up the formatting, but you pasted a very lengthy code, generated by an LLM. Perhaps consider using a pastebin in the future, if at all.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- NoahKAndrews 1y ago
  AppImageLauncher improves the AppImage experience a lot, including making sure they get added to the menu. I'm not sure if it makes launching without the sandbox easier or not.
jmvldz 1y ago
Coding agents are the future and it's anyone's game right now. The main reason I think there is such a proliferation is it's not clear what the best interface to coding agents will be. Is it in Slack and Linear? Is it on the CLI? Is it a web interface with a code editor? Is it VS Code or Zed? Just like everyone has their favored IDE, in a few years time, I think everyone will have their favored interaction pattern for coding agents. Product managers might like Devin because they don't need to setup an environment. Software engineers might still prefer Cursor because they want to edit the code and run tests on their own. Cursor has a concept of a shadow workspace and I think we're going to see this across all coding agents. You kick off an async task in whatever IDE you use and it presents the results of the agent in an easy to review way a bit later. As for Void, I think being open source is valuable on it's own. My understanding is Microsoft could enforce license restrictions at some point down the road to make Cursor difficult to use with certain extensions. Another YC backed open source VS Code is Continue: https://www.continue.dev/ https://www.continue.dev/ (Caveat: I am a YC founder building in this space: https://www.engines.dev/ https://www.engines.dev/)
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  When can we expect a release from Engines?
andrewpareles 1y ago
Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having more control over the UX. There are certainly a lot of alternatives that are plugins(!), but our differentiation right now is being a full open source IDE and having all the features you get out of the big players (quick edits, agent mode, autocomplete, checkpoints). Surprisingly, all of the big IDEs today (Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot) send your messages through their backend whenever you send a message, and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). Your connection to providers is direct with Void, and it's a lot easier to spin up your own models/providers and host locally or use whatever provider you want. We're planning on building Git branching for agents in the next iteration when LLMs are more independent, and controlling the full IDE experience for that will be really important. I worry plugins will struggle.
- bglusman 1y ago
  The versioning and git branching sounds really neat, I think! Can you say more about that? Curious if you've looked at/are considering using Jujutsu/JJ[0] in addition or instead of git for this, I've played with it some, but been considering trying it more with new AI coding stuff, it feels like it could be a more natural fit than actually creating explicit commits for every change, while still tracking them all? Just a thought! [0]https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
  - jmvldz 1y ago
    I agree the branching sounds super cool!
  - danenania 1y ago
    If you're open to something CLI-based, my project Plandex[1] offers git-based branching (and granular versioning) for AI coding. It also has a sandbox (also built on git) that keeps cumulative changes separate from project files until they're ready to apply. 1 - https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
  - andrewpareles 1y ago
ramoz 1y ago
You forgot the best one to compare against - Claude Code.
- andrewpareles 1y ago
  We think terminal tools like Claude Code are a good way for research teams to experiment with tool use (obviously pure text), but definitely don't see the terminal as the endgame for these tools. I know some folks like using the terminal, but if you like Claude Code you should consider plugging your API key into Void and using Claude there! Same exact model and provider and price, but with a UI around the tool calls, checkpoints, etc.
  - ramoz 1y ago
    I’m a traditional millennial brat - high preference for UI as well. That is until I started using Claude Code. It’s not about the terminal. It’s just a better UX in general.
nowittyusername 1y ago
I've tried many of AI coding IDE's, the best ones like RooCode are good simply because they don't gimp your context. The modern day models are already more then capable enough for many coding tasks, you just need to leave them alone and let them utilize their full context window and all will go well. If you hear a bad experience with any of these IDE's, most of the time its because its limiting use of context or improper management of related functions.
aylmao 1y ago
> It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. For real. I think it's because code editors seem to be in that perfect intersection of: - A tool for programmers. Programmers like building for programmers. - A tool for productivity. Companies will pay for productivity. - A tool that's clearly AI-able. VC's will invest in AI tools. - A tool with plenty of open source lift. The clear, common (and extreme?) example of this being forking VSCode. Add to that the recent purchase of VSCode-fork [1] Windsurf for $3 billion [2] and I suspect we will see many more of these. [1]: https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This%20is%20why%20we%20decided%20to%20take%20the%20somewhat%2Dmemed%20approach%20of%20forking%20Visual%20Studio%20Code https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This... [2]: https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-for-3-billion/1253475 https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

jadbox 1y ago

My 2c: I rarely need agent mode. As an older engineer, I usually know what exactly needs to be done and have no problem describing to the LLM what to do to solve what I'm aiming to do. Agent mode seems its more for novice developers who are unsure what tasks need to be broken down and the strategy that they are then solved.

ivape 1y ago
"Novice mode" has always been true for the newcomer. When I was new, I really was at the mercy of: 1) Authority (whatever a prominent evangelist developer was peddling) 2) The book I was following as a guide 3) The tutorial I was following as a guide 4) The consensus of the crowd at the time 5) Whatever worked (SO, brute force, whatever library, whatever magic) It took a long ass time before I got to throw all five of those things out (throw the map away). At the moment, #5 on that list is AI (whatever works). It's a Rite of Passage, and because so much of being a developer involves autodidacticism, this is a valley you must go through. Even so, it's pretty cool when you make it out of that valley (you can do whatever you want without any anxiety about is this the right path?). You are never fearful or lost in the valley(s) for the most part afterward.
- boredtofears 1y ago
  If you use AI agents for all your work as a novice do you ever make it out of the valley?
  - ivape 1y ago
    Yeah. Most people have not deployed enough critical code that was mostly written with AI. It's when that stuff breaks, and they have to debug it with AI, that's when they'll have to contend with the blood, sweat, and tears. That's when the person will swear that they'll never use AI again. The thing is, we can never not use AI ever again. So, this is the trial by fire where many will figure out the depth of the valley and emerge from it with all the lessons. I can only speculate, but I suspect the lessons will be something along the lines of "some things should use less AI than others". I think it's a cool journey, best of luck to the AI-first crowd, you will learn lessons the rest of us are not brave enough to embark on. I already have a basket of lessons, so I travel differently through the valley (hint: My ship still has a helm).
    - juliushuijnk 1y ago
      > that's when they'll have to contend with the blood, sweat, and tears. Or, most software will become immutable. You'll just replace it. You'll throw away the mess, and let a newer LLM build a better version in a couple of days. You ask the LLM to write down the specs for the newer version based on the old code. If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind.
      - ivape 1y ago
        If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind. Not even, devoured might be more apt. If I'm manually moving through this valley and a flood is coming through, those who are sticking automatic propellers and navigation systems on their ship are going to be the ones that can surf the flood and come out of the valley. We don't know, this is literally the adventure. I'm personally on the side of a hybrid approach. It's fun as hell, best of luck to everyone. It's in poor taste to bring up this example, but I'll mention it as softly as I can. There were some people that went down looking for the Titanic recently. It could have worked, you know what I mean? These are risks we all take. Quoting the Admiral from Starcraft Broodwars cinematic (I'm a learned person): "... You must go into this with both eyes open"
dakiol 1y ago
Same here. It’s fine for me to use the ChatGPT web interface and switch between it and my IDE/editor. Context switching is not the bottleneck. I actually like to go away from the IDE/keyboard to think through problems in a different environment (so a voice version of chatgpt that I can talk to via my smartwatch while walking and see some answers either on my smartglasses or via sound would be ideal… I don’t really need more screen (monitor) time)
- DoesntMatter22 1y ago
  Man that workflow is brutal
- divan 1y ago
  I use voice mode of ChatGPT almost exclusively using RayBan metaglasses(especially when outside / cyciling).
- jjani 1y ago
  You would like to, or you're actually doing that right now?
- johnisgood 1y ago
  > Same here. It’s fine for me to use the ChatGPT web interface and switch between it and my IDE/editor. I do this all the time, and I am completely fine with it. Sure, I need to pay more attention, but I think it does more good than harm.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  Sorry to say but this workflow just isn't great unless you're working on something where AI models aren't that helpful -- obscure language/libraries/etc where they hallucinate or write non-idiomatic solutions if left to run much by themselves. In that case, you want the strong human review loop that comes from crafting the context via copy paste and inspecting the results before copying back. For well trodden paths that AI is good at, you're wasting a ton of time copying context and lint/typechecking/test results and copying back edits. You could probably double your productivity by having an agentic coding workflow in the background doing stuff that's easy while you manually focus on harder problems, or just managing two agents that are working on easy code.
fellowmartian 1y ago
I’m a senior engineer and I find myself using agents all the time. Working on huge codebases or experimenting with different languages and technologies makes everybody “novice”.
- azinman2 1y ago
  Can you give some examples of how you use it? I'm used to asking for very specific things, but less so full on agent mode.
  - hadlock 1y ago
    Agent mode seems to be better at realizing all the places in the code base that need to be updated, particularly if the feature touches 5+ files, whereas editor starts to struggle with features that touch 2-3 files. "every 60 ticks, predict which items should get cached based on user direction of travel, then fetch, transform and cache them. when new items need to be drawn, check the cache first and draw from there, otherwise fetch and transform on demand." this touches the core engine, user movement, file operations, graphics etc and agent mode seems to have no problem with this at all.
  - maronato 1y ago
    Personally, I’ve found agents to be a great “multitasking” tool. Let’s say I make a few changes in the code that will require changes or additions to tests. I give the agent the test command I want it to run and the files to read, and let it cycle between running tests and modifying files. While it’s doing that, I open Slack or do whatever else I need to do. After a few minutes, I come back, review the agent’s changes, fix anything that needs to be fixed or give it further instructions, and move to the next thing.
    - andrewpareles 1y ago
      I think a good use of time while waiting for an LLM is to ask another LLM for something. Until then Slack will do :)
SkyBelow 1y ago
One benefit is when working on multiple code bases where the size of the code base is larger than the time spent working on it, so there is still a gap of knowledge. Agents don't guarantee the correctness of a search the same an old search field does, but it offers a much more expressive way to do searches and queries in a code base. Now that I think about it, I might have only ever used agents for searching and answering questions, not for producing code. Perhaps I don't trust the AI to build a good enough structure, so while I'll use AI, it is one file at a time sort of interaction where I see every change it makes. I should probably try out one of these agent based models for a throw away project just to get more anecdotes to base my opinion on.
volkk 1y ago
kind of ironic, because the novices are the ones that absolutely should be doing things by hand to get better at the craft.
- skeledrew 1y ago
  The day will come when only a few need to be "better at the craft". Just as with Assembly and even C.
  - spookie 1y ago
    C is still in the top 5 most used languages by any metric.
  - volkk 1y ago
    no one writes assembly, but good engineers still understand how things work under the hood
victorbjorklund 1y ago
I dont agree. I use agents all the time. I say exactly what the agent should do but often changes need to be made in more than one place in the code base. Could I prompt it for every change one at a time per file? Sure, but it is faster do prompt an agent for it.
rcarmo 1y ago
Considering that Agent Mode saves me a lot of hassle doing refactoring ("move the handler to file X and review imports", "check where this constant is used and replace it with <another> for <these cases>", etc.), I'd say you are missing the point... I actually flip things - I do the breakdown myself in a SPEC.md file and then have the agent work through it. Markdown checklists work great, and the agent can usually update/expand them as it goes.
SkyPuncher 1y ago
I couldn't use AI code without agentic mode. At it's most basic, agentic mode is necessary for building the proper context. While I might know the solution at the high level, I need the agent to explore the code base to find things I reference and bring them into context before writing code. Agentic mode is also super helpful for getting LLMs from "99%" correct code to "100%" correct code. I'll ask them to do something to verify their work. This is often when the agent realizes it hallucinated a method name or used a directionally correct, but wrong column name.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
neutronicus 1y ago
My main interest in agent mode is deputizing the C++ compiler to tell the LLM about everything it has hallucinated.
mulmen 1y ago
I think this perspective is better characterized as “solo” and not “old”. I don’t think your age is relevant here. Senior engineers are not necessarily old but have the experience to delegate manageable tasks to peers including juniors and collaborate with stakeholders. They’re part of an organization by definition. They’re senior to their peers in terms of experience or knowledge, not age. Agentic AIs slot into this pattern easily. If you are a solo dev you may not find this valuable. If you are a senior then you probably do.
pdntspa 1y ago
20yrs engineer here, all my life I've dreamed of having something that I could ask general questions about a codebase to and get back a cohesive, useful answer. And that future is now.
- econ 1y ago
  I would put it more generic. I love that one can now ask as many dumb questions as it takes about anything. With humans there is this point where even the most patient teacher has to move on to do other things. Learning is best when one is curios about something and curiosity is more often specific. (When generic one can just read the manual)

behnamoh 1y ago

The difference is this one is backed by Y Combinator.

glitchc 1y ago
Does this mean "open source" is really "market capture before becoming closed-source"?
- dang 1y ago
  I've been at many open source meetups with YC founders and can tell you that this is not the thinking at all. Rather, the emphasis is on finding a good carve-line between the open source offering and the (eventual) paid one, so that both sides are viable and can thrive. Most common these days is to make the paid product be a hosted version of the open source software, but there are other ways too. Experienced founders emphasize to new startups how important it is to get this right and to keep your open source community happy. No one I've heard is treating open source like a bait and switch; quite the opposite. What is sought is a win-win where each component (open source and paid) does better because of the other.
  - danenania 1y ago
    Exactly right. I think there’s a general misconception out there that open sourcing will cannibalize your hosted product business if you make it too easy to run. But in practice, there’s not a lot of overlap between people who want to self-host and people who want cloud. Most people who want cloud still want it even if they can self-host with a single command.
- mp5 1y ago
  One of the founders here - Void will always remain open source! There are plenty of examples of an open source alternative finding its own niche (eg Supabase, Mattermost) and we don't see this being any different.
  - dcreater 1y ago

kristopolous 1y ago

Void has been around since last year. I'm working on an agnostic unified framework to make contexts transferrable between these tools. This will permit zero friction, zero interruption transitions without any code modification. Should have something to show by next week. Hit me up if you're interested in working on this problem - I'm tired of cowboying my projects.

cryptoz 1y ago

Yup - honestly the space is so open right now still, everyone is trying haha. It's got quite hard to keep track of different models and their strengths / weaknesses, much less the IDE and editor space! I have no idea which of these AI editors would suite me best and a new one comes out like every day. I'm still in vim with copilot and know I'm missing out. Anyway I'm also adding to the problem as I've got my own too (don't we all?!), at https://codeplusequalsai.com https://codeplusequalsai.com. Coded in vim 'cause I can't decide on an editor!

jmvldz 1y ago
This is cool! I like that you have a visual element for the agent working on multiple tickets at a time.
- cryptoz 1y ago
  Thanks! And yeah, it really is satisfying watching the tickets move from column to column "all on their own" as the works gets done!

dheera 1y ago

The weird thing is, the biggest reason I don't use Cursor much is because they just distribute this AppImage, which doesn't install or add itself to the Ubuntu app menu, it just sits there and I have to do sudo chmod 755 path/to/Cursor-0.48.6.x86_64.AppImage path/to/Cursor-0.48.6.x86_64.AppImage and then I get greeted with an error message: The setuid sandbox is not running as root. Common causes: * An unprivileged process using ptrace on it, like a debugger. * A parent process set prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, ...) Failed to move to new namespace: PID namespaces supported, Network namespace supported, but failed: errno = Operation not permitted I have to go Googling, then realize I have to run it with bin/appimage/Cursor-0.48.6-x86_64.AppImage --no-sandbox Often I'm lazy to do all of this and just use the Claude / ChatGPT web version and paste code back and forth to VS code. The effort required to start Cursor is the reason I don't use it much. VS code is an actual, bona fide installed app with an icon that sits on my screen, I just click it to launch it. So much easier. Even if I have to write code manually.

pineaux 1y ago
[flagged]
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Not only did you mess up the formatting, but you pasted a very lengthy code, generated by an LLM. Perhaps consider using a pastebin in the future, if at all.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
NoahKAndrews 1y ago
AppImageLauncher improves the AppImage experience a lot, including making sure they get added to the menu. I'm not sure if it makes launching without the sandbox easier or not.

jmvldz 1y ago

Coding agents are the future and it's anyone's game right now. The main reason I think there is such a proliferation is it's not clear what the best interface to coding agents will be. Is it in Slack and Linear? Is it on the CLI? Is it a web interface with a code editor? Is it VS Code or Zed? Just like everyone has their favored IDE, in a few years time, I think everyone will have their favored interaction pattern for coding agents. Product managers might like Devin because they don't need to setup an environment. Software engineers might still prefer Cursor because they want to edit the code and run tests on their own. Cursor has a concept of a shadow workspace and I think we're going to see this across all coding agents. You kick off an async task in whatever IDE you use and it presents the results of the agent in an easy to review way a bit later. As for Void, I think being open source is valuable on it's own. My understanding is Microsoft could enforce license restrictions at some point down the road to make Cursor difficult to use with certain extensions. Another YC backed open source VS Code is Continue: https://www.continue.dev/ https://www.continue.dev/ (Caveat: I am a YC founder building in this space: https://www.engines.dev/ https://www.engines.dev/)

handfuloflight 1y ago
When can we expect a release from Engines?

andrewpareles 1y ago

Void dev here! The biggest players in AI code today are full IDEs, not just extensions, and we think that's because they simply feel better to use by having more control over the UX. There are certainly a lot of alternatives that are plugins(!), but our differentiation right now is being a full open source IDE and having all the features you get out of the big players (quick edits, agent mode, autocomplete, checkpoints). Surprisingly, all of the big IDEs today (Cursor/Windsurf/Copilot) send your messages through their backend whenever you send a message, and there is no open source full IDE alternative (besides Void). Your connection to providers is direct with Void, and it's a lot easier to spin up your own models/providers and host locally or use whatever provider you want. We're planning on building Git branching for agents in the next iteration when LLMs are more independent, and controlling the full IDE experience for that will be really important. I worry plugins will struggle.

bglusman 1y ago
The versioning and git branching sounds really neat, I think! Can you say more about that? Curious if you've looked at/are considering using Jujutsu/JJ[0] in addition or instead of git for this, I've played with it some, but been considering trying it more with new AI coding stuff, it feels like it could be a more natural fit than actually creating explicit commits for every change, while still tracking them all? Just a thought! [0]https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
- jmvldz 1y ago
  I agree the branching sounds super cool!
- danenania 1y ago
  If you're open to something CLI-based, my project Plandex[1] offers git-based branching (and granular versioning) for AI coding. It also has a sandbox (also built on git) that keeps cumulative changes separate from project files until they're ready to apply. 1 - https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
- andrewpareles 1y ago

ramoz 1y ago

You forgot the best one to compare against - Claude Code.

andrewpareles 1y ago
We think terminal tools like Claude Code are a good way for research teams to experiment with tool use (obviously pure text), but definitely don't see the terminal as the endgame for these tools. I know some folks like using the terminal, but if you like Claude Code you should consider plugging your API key into Void and using Claude there! Same exact model and provider and price, but with a UI around the tool calls, checkpoints, etc.
- ramoz 1y ago
  I’m a traditional millennial brat - high preference for UI as well. That is until I started using Claude Code. It’s not about the terminal. It’s just a better UX in general.

nowittyusername 1y ago

I've tried many of AI coding IDE's, the best ones like RooCode are good simply because they don't gimp your context. The modern day models are already more then capable enough for many coding tasks, you just need to leave them alone and let them utilize their full context window and all will go well. If you hear a bad experience with any of these IDE's, most of the time its because its limiting use of context or improper management of related functions.

aylmao 1y ago

> It feels like everyone and their mother is building coding agents these days. For real. I think it's because code editors seem to be in that perfect intersection of: - A tool for programmers. Programmers like building for programmers. - A tool for productivity. Companies will pay for productivity. - A tool that's clearly AI-able. VC's will invest in AI tools. - A tool with plenty of open source lift. The clear, common (and extreme?) example of this being forking VSCode. Add to that the recent purchase of VSCode-fork [1] Windsurf for $3 billion [2] and I suspect we will see many more of these. [1]: https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This%20is%20why%20we%20decided%20to%20take%20the%20somewhat%2Dmemed%20approach%20of%20forking%20Visual%20Studio%20Code https://windsurf.com/blog/why-we-built-windsurf#:~:text=This... [2]: https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-for-3-billion/1253475 https://community.openai.com/t/openai-is-acquiring-windsurf-...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]