zlacker

>>swyx+(OP)
Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again.

Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish.

Both Windsurf and Cursor are riddled with bugs that don't exist upstream, _especially_ in their AI assistant features beyond the VSCode core. Context management which is supposed to be the core featured added is itself incredibly poorly implemented [1].

Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator.

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_vs_code_sub...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1kbt790/rules_in_49...

>>Androi+0W
Copilot owns the platform, had an amazing head start and yet still is the worst option available. I don’t mean to be harsh but this was a titanic fumble.

>>bn-l+w01
GitHub has been failing upward for more than 5 years. They could have totally dominated software development and security - failed. Could have been the undisputed champion of code hosting - failed. Should have dominated development co-pilots - failed.

I actually find it a little reassuring that they can't seem to get out of their own way.

>>bearde+v21
To be fair, they have been behind the competition for many years. Gitlab had extremely good CI, security scanning, organisational concepts, etc. for years before GitHub introduced their ones (and Actions still has a worse UX, and GitHub still doesn't have anything below an organisation).

>>sofixa+G91
And it being open core (MIT) means spinning up a version to test something is incredibly easy. Not exactly resource cheap, as it's still a rails app with multiple servers "smuggled" in the docker image, but it is easy

And I have long held that they are hungry, shipping like clockwork on or about the 20th of every month, showing up with actual improvements all the time https://about.gitlab.com/releases/ It seems this month brings 18.0 with it, for whatever that version bump happens to include

They also have a pretty good track record of "liberating" some premium features into the MIT side of things; I think it's luck of the draw, but it's not zero and it doesn't seem to be tied to any underhanded reason that I can spot

>>mdanie+Yi1
Why gitlab hasn't been able to capitalize on GitHub's many failures is almost as interesting as GitHub's fall.

I think the GitHub brand is still stronger and people just don't "care" about gitlab.

>>bearde+hC1
Yeah, it's almost certainly the network effect. Although poor GitLab isn't doing themselves any favors by picking what seems to be the slowest web framework one can possibly imagine

But, anytime I am empowered to pick, I'm going to pick GitLab 100% of the time because it has every feature that I care about and "being popular" isn't a feature that I care about