Comment by matthoward
8 years ago
What Kite supposedly does is crowd-source code by uploading users' code to its server and then aggregating that data to train their ML algorithm. Then they can apply said algorithm on a specific client's code to recommend autocompletion suggestions as you type.
There are plenty of great use-cases for ML in building coding tools, but the shady manner in which Kite imposes itself on Atom users who have these plug-ins installed (which is a large portion of the user-base), leaves a seriously bad taste in your mouth.
The thing is I don't trust this explanation for a second especially as it applies to non-paying customers; they could have just as easily trained a generic ML algorithm on a publicly available data set, like I don't know, the public stuff on github.
Moreover, they could have trained their suggestions to actually be useful before throwing this out there as a feature set they thought people would want to use.
Plus then it'd make sense for people to open up their code, as a "local dictionary" of sorts that could be prioritized over generic suggestions. But at least then it would have had demonstrated value.
How much content are they auto-completing? Seems like this could easily end up with some other organization's proprietary code auto-filling inside your project. This is very dangerous; it's either only auto-completing single standard-library function names in which case it doesn't need cloud connectvitiy, or it's auto-completing actual code which opens up users to IP issues.