It's amazing how little of my colleagues don't use Cursor simply because they haven't taken the 10 minutes to set it up.
It's amazing how many naysayers there are about Cursor. There are many here and they obviously don't use Cursor. I know this because they point out pitfalls that Cursor barely runs into, and their criticism is not about Cursor, but about AI code in general.
Some examples:
"I tried to create a TODO app entirely with AI prompts" - Cursor doesn't work like that. It lets you take the wheel at any moment because it's embedded in your IDE.
"AI is only good for reformatting or boilerplate" - I copy over my boilerplate. I use Cursor for brand new features.
"Sonnet is same as old-timey google" - lol Google never generated code for you in your IDE, instantly, in the proper place (usually).
"the constantly changing suggested completions seem really distracting" - You don't need to use the suggested completions. I barely do. I mostly use the chat.
"IDEs like cursor make you feel less competent" - This is perhaps the strongest argument, since my quarrel is simply philosophical. If you're executing better, you're being more competent. But yes some muscles atrophy.
"My problem with all AI code assistants is usually the context" - In Cursor you can pass in the context or let it index/search your codebase for the context.
You all need to open your minds. I understand change is hard, but this change is WAY better.
Cursor is a tool, and like any tool you need to know how to use it. Start with the chat. Start by learning when/what context you need to pass into chat. Learn when Cmd+K is better. Learn when to use Composer.
I've noticed that tools like Cursor doesn't really seem to make difference in the end. The good software developers are still the good software developers, regardless of editors.
I don't think you should be upset or worried that people aren't adopting these tools as you think they should. If the tool really lives up to its hype then the non-adopters will fall behind and, for example, be forced to switch to Cursive. This happened with IDEs (e.g. IntelliSense, jump to definition). It may happen with tools like Cursive.
I certainly don't feel this way but if I'm proven wrong thats good.
To be proven wrong would be that Cursor is used by all devs or that IDEs adopt AI into their workflow?
Like OP using cursor has been a huge productivity boost. I maintain a few postgres databases, I work as a fullstack developer, and manage kubernetes configs. When using cursor to write sql tables or queries it adopts my way of writing sql. It analyzed (context) my database folder and when I ask it to create a query, a function, a table, the output is in my style. This blew me away when I first started with cursor.
Onto react/nextjs projects. In the same fashion, I have my way of writing components, fetching data, and now writing RSA. Cursor analyzed my src folder, and when asked to create components from scratch the output was again similar to my style. I use raw CSS and class names, what was an obstacle of naming has become trivial with Cursor ("add an appropriate class to this component with this styling"). Again, it analyzed all my CSS files and spits out css/classes in my writing/formatting style. And working on large projects it is easy to forget the many many components, packages, etc. that integrated/have been written already. Again, cursor comes out on top.
Am I good developer or a bad developer? Don't know. Don't care. I'm cranking out features faster than I have ever done in my decades of development. As has been said before, as a software engineer you spend more time reading code than writing. Same applies to genAI. It turns out that I can ask cursor to analyze packages, spit out code, yaml configuration, sql, and it gets me 80% done with writing from scratch. Heck, if I need types to get full client/server type completion experience, it does that too! I have removed many dependencies (tailwind, tRPC, react query, prisma, to name a few) because cursor has helped me overcome obstacles that these tool assisted in (and I still have typescript code hints in all my function calls!).
All in all, cursor has made a huge difference for me. When colleagues ask me to help them optimize sql, I ask cursor to help out. When colleagues ask to write generic types for their components, I ask cursor to help out. Whether cursor or some other tool, integrating AI with the IDE has been a boom for me.
Oh yeah, typo, I work with the Cursive IDE a lot. I've spent a good amount of time with Cursor. And I have no doubt that it provides a lot of utility. I also would agree that most good devs I know definitely adopt some form of LLM integration. I would even agree that a lot of cursive features will bleed into other editors, maybe being considered a necessity.
I just haven't made the observation that most people have switched to Cursor full-time and I also haven't noticed that those who have are on another level compared to those using their other editor plus chatgpt/copilot/etc.
Cursor's show-stopping problem is not if it is useful, the problem is that it is proprietary. These sorts of tools are fun to play with to try out things that might be useful in the future but relying on them puts you at the mercy of a VC backed company with corresponding dodgy motivations. The only way these technologies will be acceptable for widespread use is to measure them as we do programming languages and to only adopt free software implementations.
To an ideological position like yours, I would say... maybe? I, for one, am happy to pay for good solutions and let the market figure it out. If there are open source solutions that are just as smooth, that's great. I've seen a few, but none have been as good thus far.
I've been keeping an eye out for a good, free software development tool like this but I've also seen nothing viable yet. The main problem really seems to be that the required hardware is expensive and resource intensive which keeps most of the talent from being able to work on it. Once the required hardware becomes more common place I think multiple free software versions will pop up to fill the niche.
Have you looked at Continue.dev? It’s open source and allows both local/open source and commercial models. It’s definitely got challenges / bugs (particularly for remote dev) but I think is worth a look.
I also find it fascinating how in almost every LLM-related discussion there are people always writing arguments to prove that LLMs do not work.
OK, I understand. Maybe they can't get much use of them and that's fine. But why they always insist that the tools don't work for everyone is something I can't make any sense of.
I stopped arguing online about this though. If they don't want to use LLMs that's fine too. Others (we) are taking their business.
I've been a paying customer for Jetbrains IDE for years.
After trying Cursor, I'd say if I were Jetbrains devs I'd be very worried. It's a true paradiam shift. It feels like Jetbrains' competitve edge over other editors/IDEs mostly vanished overnight.
Of course Jetbrains has its own AI-based solution and I'm sure they'll add more. But I think what Jetbrains excels -- the understanding of semantics -- is no longer that important for an IDE.
Why would they be? Cursor took an existing editor and added some AI features on top of it. Features that are enabled by a third party API with some good prompts, something easily replicable by any editor company. Current LLMs are a commodity.
I am slow to take on new tools and was coding in Notepad for far too long... but I am already on the Cursor boat. Right now, I use it for two things - code completion and pasting error messages into chat.
When people complain about LLMs hallucinating results, that doesn't really apply because it is either guessing wrong on the autocomplete (in which case I just keep typing) or it doesn't instantly point out the bug, in which case I look at the code or jump to Google.
The naysayers used to bother me, but then I realized it’s no skin off my back if they don’t want to become familiar with a transformative technology. Stay with the old tools, people are getting excited for no reason at all, everyone is just pretending to be more productive!
It reminds me of how blackberry users insisted physical keyboards were necessary and smartphone touchscreen users were deluded.
The one thing i've seemed to notice about this technology, is that technology never really replaces people... It just forces those to add things...
More, more more is always the reaction to transformative technologies because us humans have this underlying obsession with growth and scale.
For instance, in 1910 Fords manufacturing lines were producing about 7,000 cars a week. As robotics, conveyance and general automation was introduced they didn't hire less workers, they hired more. Now they produce millions of cars per year.
Software will be the same. Devs will be expected to write more code, and produce more features. There has been an explosion in AI based hiring since.
This is the fundamental question most of us seem to have.
On the one hand, logic does seem to dictate supply/demand of the profession will lower salaries. Also no one really cares how code was written or if it's pretty.
On the other hand, these tools have only seemed to increase our value so far. Someone who knows how to code with AI is now 1000x more valuable than someone who doesn't know how to code.
You still need to know how to code to be able to contribute. How long that remains the case is the question. You could be right
I’m not using Cursor because I don’t want my code to go through yet another middleman I’m not sure I can trust. I can relatively safely put my trust in OpenAI, but Cursor? Not so sure. How do I know they’re secure?
At one company, the CEO said AI tools in general should not be used, due to fear of invalidating a patent application in progress after the lawyer said it must be kept secret except with NDA partners. I explained that locally run LLMs don't upload anything, so those are ok. This is a company that really needs better development velocity, and is buried alive in reports that need writing,
On the other hand, at another company, where the NDAs are stronger and more one-sided, and there's a stronger culture of code silos, "who needs to know" governing read access to individual code repos, even for mundane things like web dashboards, and higher security in general, I expected nobody would be allowed to use these tools, yet I saw people talking about their Copilot and Cursor use openly on the company Slack.
There was someone sitting next to me using Cursor yesterday. I'd consider hiring them, if they're interested, but there's no way they're going to want to join a company that forbids using AI tools that upload code being worked on.
So I don't think companies are particularly consistent about this at the moment.
(Perhaps Apple's Private Cloud Compute service, and whatever equivalents we get from other cloud vendors, will eventuall make a difference to how companies see this stuff. We might also see some interesting developments with fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). That's very slow, but the highly symmetric tensor arithmetic used in ML has potential to work better with FHE than general purpose compute.)
Yeah. The CoPilot plugin for PyCharm is pretty good, so not sure what Cursor offers above that esp now that CoPilot can use Claude Sonnet on the backend.
You wouldn't be the first engineer to fade into irrelevance because they were too proud to adapt to the changing world around them. I'd encourage you to open your mind a bit.
It's amazing how many naysayers there are about Cursor. There are many here and they obviously don't use Cursor. I know this because they point out pitfalls that Cursor barely runs into, and their criticism is not about Cursor, but about AI code in general.
Some examples:
"I tried to create a TODO app entirely with AI prompts" - Cursor doesn't work like that. It lets you take the wheel at any moment because it's embedded in your IDE.
"AI is only good for reformatting or boilerplate" - I copy over my boilerplate. I use Cursor for brand new features.
"Sonnet is same as old-timey google" - lol Google never generated code for you in your IDE, instantly, in the proper place (usually).
"the constantly changing suggested completions seem really distracting" - You don't need to use the suggested completions. I barely do. I mostly use the chat.
"IDEs like cursor make you feel less competent" - This is perhaps the strongest argument, since my quarrel is simply philosophical. If you're executing better, you're being more competent. But yes some muscles atrophy.
"My problem with all AI code assistants is usually the context" - In Cursor you can pass in the context or let it index/search your codebase for the context.
You all need to open your minds. I understand change is hard, but this change is WAY better.
Cursor is a tool, and like any tool you need to know how to use it. Start with the chat. Start by learning when/what context you need to pass into chat. Learn when Cmd+K is better. Learn when to use Composer.