[bunnyman]

Interesting!

Being in the same product space for more than 3 months, I wonder how one can not come across 2 popular open source tools that do more or less the same thing.

Like Aider has 21k stars, and Cline has around 11k stars. Both these product names come up on HN, Reddit frequently.

Curious to know if YC does some research on existing products before backing a new business.

[brandonchen]

It seems like we're all in our own tech bubbles more and more. Distribution is clearly a tough problem to crack, and no one in this space has really mastered it yet, aside from arguably Github Copilot.

No comment on YC here, but I think it's easy to criticize from the outside. I've personally have been impressed by all the peers, group partners, and alumni I've met so far. I'm biased, but I think YC knows what it's doing. Also, YC backs founders, not ideas.

[Oras]

In any YC application, they request a list of competitors and why your product is better! Curious about what OP listed as competitors in the application.

[jahooma]

Here's my application: https://manicode.notion.site/Manicode-YC-application-c52f592...

I listed: Cursor, Devin, Codium, Augment, Greptile, Lovable.dev, Aider.chat, mentat.ai, devlo.ai, etc

So I did mention Aider. I was definitely aware that it existed, I just hadn't used it.

[iknownthing]

Maybe the person reading the application was not aware of the competition either.

[ErikBjare]

This was surprising to me too.

I've also built a similar free and open-source tool gptme (2.5k stars), since the start of last year (GPT-3.5). It has been impossible to ignore the great work done by Aider.

[TeMPOraL]

Yup. I recall that at some point maybe a year ago, pretty much every other LLM thread that had people speculating whether some LLM could do X or Y / improved or worsened for Z / etc., would have Paul show up and comment something along the lines, "Actually, I've benchmarked this thoroughly in my work on Aider; here's <link to data and analysis>" or such. Those were usually some of the most insightful comments in the whole thread.

I found those comments, and the work they linked to, especially valuable because it's rare to see advanced work on LLM applications done and talked about in the open. Everyone else doing equivalent work seems to want to make a startup out of it, so all we usually get is weekend hacks that stall out quickly.