Closed source IDEs are if anything the norm: Visual Studio, Android Studio, XCode, IntelliJ, CLion, PyCharm, etc... Even in the "fancy text editor" category things like Sublime were always popular enough.
replyClosed source?
replyIntelliJ: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community
PyCharm: https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/master/...
Android Studio: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/adt/idea/+/r...
Yes, they might offer extended proprietary editions/plugins in addition, but the IDEs themselves are open source.
None of these are the "norm". The IDEs OC mentioned all have a much larger install base.
replyDo we still need an IDE though? I am very happy with Claude Code last 6 months. I can totally see why Google got rid of everything, but the dialog box. Perhaps it was stupid to do that without warning, but ultimately this is the future.
replyI find this comment mind-boggling; in an honest confusion, not insulting way. I use Claude Code (and desktop) on a daily basis; but I can't even imagine doing anything complex without being able to see the code.
replyamen!!
replythis is why i've built all of my setup using a dotfiles-like approach with the explicit intention of always being agent/model-agnostic: https://github.com/ma08/botfiles
the key insight is that if you own the context layer and keep your skills, hooks etc. portable enough, it's actually very easy to swtich agents at will (even mid-task)
The funny part is that Gemini-Cli is open-source, and now they are getting rid of it for Antigravity CLI.. which is not open-source.
Fun.
replyFwiw, the (mostly) closed source jetbrains IDEs support multiple models with their coding agents, byok, and using different agents like Claude Code via ACP
replyFair, the important distinction is agent-agnostic rather than open-source. There are other risks to using a closed source editor but those are mostly orthogonal to this discussion.
replyIf you care about keeping your development environment free from corporate lockin and control you should also avoid closed source CLIs and use open-weight models.
replyAntigravity is just a vs code (more correctly: codeium) skin with Google telemetry and agent Integration. You can switch back to Microsoft's or cursor's flavor in minutes.
replyIt isn't anymore, though, that's kind of the whole point of the article.
replyThing is, I recognize this UI. It looks identical to the VS Code "Agents Window" feature. Except it's... a standalone app, for some reason.
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