Google Antigravity versus Magic Cloud
Google just came out with a "me too" software development platform called Google Antigravity. It's basically a shallow copy of Cursor AI, built on top of Visual Studio Code. Its purpose is to use it as an alternative IDE, having AI generate code for you.
It repeats the mistakes of all previous attempts made by others though, such as for instance not making it possible to deploy directly to production due to a separation of the development environment and the runtime environment. Hence, in such a regard, it's only possible "moat" would be a stronger base LLM. It's the type of stuff we've seen dozens of times by others, ranging from Lovable and Bolt44, to Cursor AI and Claud.
It's not about building apps
If you're a citizen that have had dreams about becoming an IT entrepreneur for 20 years, Google's Antigravity will probably empower you a lot. And if you're maintaining a legacy codebase from 2010, it might also be able to help you out. However, like all other no-code AI code-generators, it's completely missing the point.
Creating software is about solving problems, not generating code
To understand what I mean by the above, let me tell you about one of our clients. Below is a screenshot I want you to look at ...
Arigato came to us because they wanted an AI agent capable of booking website visitors. The idea was that everybody already using their AI chatbot could schedule their guided tours from directly within the AI chatbot itself.
I could have spent 1,000 hours inside of Google's Antigravity IDE, and it would probably have produced millions of lines of code for me, without being able to solve the problem. With Magic Cloud it took Barnabas a couple of hours to deliver. When they're ready to set it into production, Arigato Travels will have an AI agent capable of dealing with reservations and bookings.
Creating software is not about producing code, it's about solving problems. Implying Google's Antigravity can produce a million of lines of code for me, 100% perfect lines of code, that completely misses the mark, incapable of delivering what was needed to solve the problem.
Production
Since Google Antigravity is a traditional IDE, that allows you to generate code - This implies that once the code has been generated, it needs to be deployed somewhere. Deploying software (securely), is something every system developer knows is a hassle. It implies getting a server, configure your database, secure your server, SSH into the server to copy code, or building a deployment pipeline in GitHub, etc, etc, etc.
Going from "code" to "working app" is not an afterthought
With Magic your code is already in production once you've created the code. No need to mess with GitHub workflows, pipelines, or GIT for that matter. Everything is in one single runtime environment, which doubles as your development environment. This completely eliminates the need for any additional configuration besides generating the code, testing it, and verifying it's working. Once you've got working code with Magic Cloud, you've got a working production app.
The Age of Abandonment
Google holds a suspicious world record most of you already know about, which is they're the world champions of abanding projects. How many social media attempts did they create to compete with Facebook and Twitter for instance? 20? 100?
Google's Antigravity is abandonware, if not for any other reasons than the fact that Google themselves have about 10 additional competitors to their own platform; Firebase, AI Studio, Google's Antigravity, etc. This implies that in a couple of years, Google's Antigravity purely statistically will be abandoned and no longer maintained.
I've actively maintained Magic for 6 years!
And Magic will be around decades after Google has left Antigravity to rot.
Hyperlambda
Did you know that you'll need 10 times as much code to reproduce in C# what you can do in Hyperlambda? Below is a simple CRUD read HTTP endpoint. In Hyperlambda it's 30 tokens, in C# it's more than 300 tokens.
This implies that the stress level on the LLM as it's trying to understand your existing code, and generate new code, becomes literally 1,000 times the required resources to do the same in Hyperlambda.
When we created Magic, we started with the fundamentals. Instead of asking ourselves how we can generate Python code, and C# code, we asked ourselves how we can simplify the creation of code, to the point where the LLM literally can't do a mistake.
The end result becomes a superior code generator platform, much more likely to actually solve your problem, assuming you're able to correctly prompt it with a technical specification.
Wrapping Up
Google's Antigravity is an amazing tool for generating code. If all you're looking for is a "starter kit" for your own micro SaaS, and you've got a couple of weeks worth of prompting to spend, it's probably an amazing tool. Just remember that the probability of that it'll be abandoned 2 years down the road is roughly 100%.
If you're looking for a serious vendor, without a history of abanding everything we come out with though, I suspect we'll be around decades after Google has thrown in the towl. And if you're looking for something you can mixin with your existing software, solving business needs, I suspect in 90% of the cases, you'd be better of using Magic.
