Welcome to The Bootloader, a bi-weekly podcast bringing you news, project updates, and product talk
from the tech and maker scenes. Paul and Tod will bring you three interesting things and chat about them for a few minutes each.
Jetbrains, the makers of code editors and IDEs powered by IntelliJ, have released a new code editor called Fleet
Focus on Speed - “fast and lightweight” is how they describe it
Code editor and / OR IDE
Smart Mode enables IDE features, including code completion, quick fixes and more
Collaboration
Built-in collaboration tools - 1 button click to start a session and it auto copies the share link for you
Distributed
You can connect using SSH for example, and it creates an instance of Fleet on the remote computer you connect to
Or easily connect to a Docker container of Jetbrains’ Space service
I’ve been using it and I like it
It does feel snappy, not sure if it’s in my head or not
As a hobbyist programmer, I probably only use a small percentage of the features found in an IDE, which is one reason why I like this
I used PyCharrm for 4 or 5 years until switching to VS Code for a year, and then switched back to PyCharm earlier this year.
Let’s call this what it is: This is Jetbrains answer to VS Code.
Where VS Code has a number icons on the side, Fleet has a few along the top
And good for Jetbrains! Competition is good, it will drive innovation. If you’re an Atom user looking for a new editor or like to try new things, give it a try, I like using it.
Shares examples of problems in both the training of model and Copilot usage
Mr. Butterick states that the objection isn’t AI assisted coding, it’s how Microsoft went about it.
Participation could have been voluntary or even paid
Microsoft claims it’s fair use
Is attribution needed?
Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy asked Github in June of 2021 for legal references to back up the fair use argument. Microsoft hasn’t provided any and Mr. Butterick says that’s because there is no legal authority for Microsoft’s position.
Copilot users have shown that Copilot can offer a suggestion of code verbatim from another project
When we look at Copilot usage, what could the impact on open source communities be?
Mr. Butterick argues that Microsoft is creating a new walled garden that might “inhibit developers from discovering traditional open source communities.”
Developers may not need to interact with an open source community in the future when the code they want is just presented to them
Bug and issue trackers, source repositories, mailing lists, etc.
Jamie Zawinski, aka jwz, a co-founder of Netscape and Mozilla