I think Cursor is already looking successful. Most VS Code people I know (including myself) have switched over. I love the idea of Haystack (I was a fan of Light Table back in the day) but if I have to pick between a better UI and an assistant who perform most simple code transforms by English language request, saving hour(s) per day, I’m picking the assistant.

Yeah the productivity optimization here makes sense. We intend to add generative AI features unique to the canvas UI as well to ensure our users don't lose productivity.

I am curious what features you like about Cursor the most? For me it's the CMD/CTRL+K -- I've had mixed experiences with the chat window and Composer.

Cmd-K and tab complete with or without writing some guiding comments

I could be wrong but I don't believe it's difficult to monetize an extension.

The reason I think there has been an explosion of VS Code forks (e.g. Supermaven, a very successful extension) is that being an extension in VS Code is limiting insofar as what you're able to change in terms of the UI and UX.

You are right about the difficulty of getting into big companies. However, we developed a standalone editor because it's easier to build on top of, and we eventually want to build a very portable browser-based editor that utilizes the canvas view for pull requests, arbitrary code, etc.

Bigcos not that hard to get into. It's just an entirely different process. You would need to hire someone with that kind of experience.

I could be wrong but one of the main reasons to fork VS Code is because extensions have a limited UI.

This was at least the motivation for Positron, AFAIK.