Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#151

Post by n_ary » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

I agree with /u/welder. Preferably neither. Both of these are custom and runs the risk of being acquired and enshittified in future.

If you are using VScode, get familiar with cline. Aider is also excellent if you don’t want to modify your IDE.

Additionally, Jetbrains IDEs now also have built-in local LLMs and their auto-complete is actually fast and decent. They also have added a new chat sidepanel in recent update.

The goal is NOT to change your workflow or dev env, but to integrate these tools into your existing flow, despite what the narrative says.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#152

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:45 AM UTC

welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#153

Post by emrah » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:45 AM UTC

> Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete ...

This represents one group of developers and is certainly valid for that group. To each their own

For another group, where I belong, AI is a great companion! We can handle the noise and development speed is improved as well as the overall experience.

I prefer VSCode and GitHub copilot. My opinion is this combo will eventually eat all the rest, but that's besides the point.

Agent mode could be faster, sometimes it is rather slow thinking but not a big deal. This mode is all I use these days. Integration with the code base is a huge part of the great experience

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#154

Post by brokegrammer » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

Lately I switched to using a triple monitor setup and coding with both Cursor and Windsurf. Basically, the middle monitor has my web browser that shows the front-end I'm building. The left monitor has Cursor, and right one has Windsurf. I start coding with Cursor first because I'm more familiar with its interface, then I ask Windsurf to check if the code is good. If it is, then I commit. Once I'm done coding a feature, I'll also open VScode in the middle monitor, with Cline installed, and I will ask it to check the code again to make sure it's perfect.

I think people who ask the "either or" question are missing the point. We're supposed to use all the AI tools, not one or two of them.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#155

Post by CuriouslyC » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:47 AM UTC

Personally, if you take the time to configure it well, I think Aider is vastly superior. You can have 4 terminals open in a grid and be running agentic coding workflows on them and 4x the throughput of someone in Cursor, whereas Cursor's UI isn't really amenable to running a bunch of instances and managing them all simultaneously. That plus Aider lets you do more complex automated Gen -> Typecheck -> Lint -> Test workflows with automated fixing.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#156

Post by m3adow » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:50 AM UTC

beacon294 wrote: post #132

m3adow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Gemini 2.5 Pro with Aider and Cline for work. I'd say when working for 8 full hours without any meetings or other interruptions, I'd hit around $2. In practice, I average at $0.50 and hit $1 once in the last weeks.

This is very inexpensive. What is your workflow and savings techniques! I can spend $10/h or more with very short sessions and few files.

Huh, I didn't configure anything for saving, honestly. I just add the whole repo and do my stuff. How do you get to $10/h? I probably couldn't even provoke this.

I assume we have a very different workflow.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#157

Post by sumedh » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:52 AM UTC

anonymoushn wrote: post #16

I evaluated Windsurf at a friend's recommendation around half a year ago and found that it could not produce any useful behaviors on files above a thousand lines or so. I understand this is mostly a property of the model, but certainly also a property of the approach used by the editor of just tossing the entire file in, yeah? I haven't tried any of these products since then, but it might be worth another shot becaus…

Windsurf has improved a lot in the last few months.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#158

Post by sumedh » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:52 AM UTC

Daedren wrote: post #125

Considering Microsoft is closing down on the ecosystem, I'd pick VSCode with Copilot over those two. It's a matter of time before they're shuttered or their experience gets far worse.

MS is slow to release new features though.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#159

Post by throwaway4aday » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

brokegrammer wrote: post #154

Lately I switched to using a triple monitor setup and coding with both Cursor and Windsurf. Basically, the middle monitor has my web browser that shows the front-end I'm building. The left monitor has Cursor, and right one has Windsurf. I start coding with Cursor first because I'm more familiar with its interface, then I ask Windsurf to check if the code is good. If it is, then I commit. Once I'm done coding a featur…

Why not just write a script that does this but with all of the model providers and requests multiple completions from each? Why have a whole ass editor open just for code review?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#160

Post by vitro » Mon, May 12, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

I had turned autocomplete off as well. Way too many times it was just plain wrong and distracting. I'd like it to be turned on for method documentation only, though, where it worked well once the method was completed, but so far I wasn't able to customize it this way.