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Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

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Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#201

Post by mirekrusin »

bilekas wrote: post #170
drcongo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cursor and Windsurf are both forks of VS Code, an editor.

Yes very observant, modified forks with their agents built in. Zed does not have any built in, sublime does not have agents built in but if you like you can continue this disingenuous discussion.

Zed has it built in, it's called "agentic editing" [0] and behaves like claude code cli and other agents – mcp based editing, iterating on tests until they pass etc. – where you leave it in a background window and can do something else waiting for completion notification or you can follow it to see what changes it is doing.

It's not only that they have it built in but it seems to be currently the best open replacement for tools like claude code cli because you can use arbitrary llm with it, ie. from ollama and you have great extension points (mcp servers, rules, slash commands etc).

[0] https://zed.dev/agentic

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#202

Post by jasongill »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #95

Asking HN this is like asking which smartphone to use. You'll get suggestions for obscure Linux-based modular phones that weigh 6 kilos and lack a clock app or wifi. But they're better because they're open source or fully configurable or whatever. Or a smartphone that a fellow HNer created in his basement and plans to sell soon. Cursor and Windsurf are both good, but do what most people do and use Cursor for a month…

"The clock app isn't missing! You just have to cross-compile it from source and flash a custom firmware that allows loading it!"

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#204

Post by gregoryl »

elAhmo wrote: post #148
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.

Cursor/Windsurf and similar IDEs and plugins are more than autocomplete on steroids. Sure, you might not like it and think you as a human should write all code, but frequent experience in the industry in the past months is that productivity in the teams using tools like this has greatly increased. It is not unreasonable to think that someone deciding not to use tools like this will not be competitive in the market in…

Ahh yes, software development, the discipline that famously has difficult to measure metrics and difficulty with long term maintenance. Months indeed.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#205

Post by gkbrk »

heymax054 wrote: post #178
wrasee wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other 10% being what differentiates them in the market :)

Of course. Are they useful enough though for people to install an entirely new software?

Since installing entirely new software is just downloading Cursor.AppImage from the official website and double-clicking on it, it's not a large hassle for most users.

If you're on Arch, there's even an AUR package, so it's even less steps than that.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#206

Post by didgeoridoo »

m3adow wrote: post #105
Oreb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately how much does it cost in practice to use Aider? My understanding is that Aider itself is free, but you have to pay per token when using an API key for your LLM of choice. I can look up for myself the prices of the various LLMs, but it doesn't help much, since I have no intuition whatsoever about how many tokens I am likely to consume. The attraction of something like Zed or Cursor for me is that I just…

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.

Wow my first venture into Claude Code (which completely failed for a minor feature addition on a tiny Swift codebase) burned $5 in about 20 minutes.

Probably related to Sonnet 3.7’s rampant ADHD and less the CLI tool itself (and maybe a bit of LLMs-suck-at-Swift?)

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#207

Post by m3adow »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #164
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.

I'd be really keen to know more about what you're using it for, how you typically prompt it, and how many times you're reaching for it. I've had some success at keeping spend low but can also easily spend $4 from a single prompt so I don't tend to use tools like Aider much. I'd be much more likely to use them if I knew I could reliably keep the spend down.

I'll try to elaborate:

I'm using VSC for most edits, tab-completion is done via Copilot, I don't use it that much though, as I find the prediction to be subpar or too wordy in case of commenting. I use Aider for rubber-ducking and implementing small to mid-scope changes. Normally, I add the required files, change to architect or ask mode (depends on the problem I want to solve), explain what my problem is and how I want it to be solved. If the Aider answer satisfies me, I change to coding mode and allow the changes.

No magic, I have no idea how a single prompt can generate $4. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm only scratching on the surface with my approach though, maybe there is a better but more costly strategy yielding better results which I just didn't realize yet.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#208

Post by tough »

imiric wrote: post #186
throwanem wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing could be worse for the modern Emacs ecosystem than for the tech industry finance vampires ("VCs," "LPs") to decide there's blood enough there to suck. Fortunately, alien space magic seems immune, so far at least. I assume they do not like the taste, and no wonder.

Why should the Emacs community care whether someone decides to build a custom editor with AI features? If anything this would bring more interest and development into the ecosystem, which everyone would benefit from. Anyone not interested can simply ignore it, as we do for any other feature someone implements into their workflow.

what i find interesting is why is nobody building llms trained on using the shell and PTY at its full

right now its dumb unix piping only

I want an AI that can use emacs or vim with me

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#209

Post by k4rli »

mdrzn wrote: post #123
victorbjorklund wrote: post #90

I'm with Cursor for the simple reason it is in practice unlimited. Honestly the slow requests after 500 per month are fast enough. Will I stay with Cursor? No, ill switch the second something better comes along.

Same. Love the "slow but free" model, I hope they can continue providing it, I love paying only $20/m instead of having a pay by usage. I've been building SO MANY small apps and web apps in the latest months, best $20/m ever spent.

20€ seems totally subsidized considering the amount of tokens. Pricing cheaply to be competitive but users will jump to the next one when they inevitably hike the price up.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#210

Post by greymalik »

drcongo wrote: post #110
_bin_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second the zed recommendation, sent from my M4 macbook. I don't know why exactly it's doing this for you but mine is idling with ~500MB RAM (about as little as you can get with a reasonably-sized Rust codebase and a language server) and 0% CPU. I have also really appreciated something that felt much less janky, had better vim bindings, and wasn't slow to start even on a very fast computer. You can completely bot…

Yeah, same. Zed is incredibly efficient on my M1 Pro. It's my daily driver these days, and my Python setup in it is almost perfect.

What’s your Python setup?
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