[johnfn]

As an (ex) VSCode extension developer, VSCode really does lock down what you can do as an extension. It's well intentioned and likely led to the success of VSCode, but it's not great if you want to build entirely new UI interactions. For instance, something like the cmd-k inline generation UI in Cursor is basically impossible as a VSCode extension.

[stevage]

Maybe someone should just fork VS Code in a more liberal way, then everyone can build their extensions on top of that.

[johnfn]

The restrictive extension ecosystem was a big part of VSCode's success. You can compare to Atom, which allowed extensions to do whatever they wanted: Atom ended up feeling exceptionally slow and bloated because extensions had full latitude to grind your IDE to a halt.

[stevage]

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that!

But since there seems to be a need for AI-powered forks of VS Code, it could make sense for them all to build off the same fork, rather than making their own.

[johnfn]

Isn’t that what they’re doing by building off of vscode?

[mp5]

Yup, just rebased about a week ago

[sureIy]

Ask Firefox how that went.

Hint: they dropped XUL because every update broke extensions

[stevage]

That's not comparable though, right? I'm suggesting a third party forks the main product.

[sureIy]

Worse. The result is the same: an unmaintainable product, and now you also become increasingly incompatible with the source.