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Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

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Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#241

Post by scottmas »

benterix wrote: post #122

For daily work - neither. They basically promote the style of work where you end up with mediocre code that you don't fully understand, and with time the situation gets worse. I get much better result by asking specific question to a model that has huge context (Gemini) and analyzing the generated code carefully. That's the opposite of the style of work you get with Cursor or Windsurf. Is it less efficient? If you ar…

But how do you dump your entire code base into Gemini? Literally all I want is a good model with my entire code base in its context window.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#242

Post by TingPing »

nsteel wrote: post #145
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 can't even get simple code generation to work for VHDL. It just gives me garbage that does not compile. I have to assume this is not the case for the majority of people using more popular languages? Is this because the training data for VHDL is far more limited? Are these "AIs" not able to consume the VHDL language spec and give me actual legal syntax at least?! Or is this because I'm being cheap and lazy by only t…

It completely fails to be helpful as a C/C++. I don’t understand the positivity around it but it must be trained on a lot of web frameworks.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#244

Post by drob518 »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #234
nsteel wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even get simple code generation to work for VHDL. It just gives me garbage that does not compile. I have to assume this is not the case for the majority of people using more popular languages? Is this because the training data for VHDL is far more limited? Are these "AIs" not able to consume the VHDL language spec and give me actual legal syntax at least?! Or is this because I'm being cheap and lazy by only t…

Its all of that to some extent or the other. LLMs don't update overnight and as such lag behind innovations in major frameworks, even in web development. No matter what is said about augmenting their capabilities, their performance using techniques like RAG seem to be lacking. They don't work well with new frameworks either. Any library that breaks backwards compatibility in major version releases will likely befuddl…

Yep, management dreams of being able to make every programmer a 10x programmer by handing them an LLM, but the 10x programmers are laughing because they know how far off the rails the LLM will go. Debugging skills are the next frontier.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#245

Post by killerstorm »

killerstorm wrote: post #56

Cursor: Autocomplete is really good. At a time when I compared them, it was without a doubt better than Githib Copilot autocomplete. Cmd-K - insert/edit snippet at cursor - is good when you use good old Sonnet 3.5. ;;; Agent mode, is, honestly, quite disappointing; it doesn't feel like they put a lot of thought into prompting and wrapping LLM calls. Sometimes it just fails to submit code changes. Which is especially…

Also something to consider: I have a script I wrote myself which just feeds selected files as a context to LLM and then either writes a response to the stdout, or extracts a file out of it.

That seems to be often better than using Cursor. I don't really understand why it calls tools when I selected entire file to be used a context - tool calls seem to be unnecessary distraction in this case, making calls more expensive. Also Gemini less neurotic when I use it with very basic prompts -- either Cursor prompts make it worse, or the need to juggle tool calls distract it from calls.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#246

Post by notepad0x90 »

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…

Surely, you're not the only one here that doesn't share the open source extremist views. HN has a diverse user base.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#247

Post by osigurdson »

vijucat wrote: post #239

If you have any intellectual property worth protecting or need to comply with HIPAA, a completely local installation of Cline or Aider or Codeium with LM Studio with Qwen or DeepSeek Coder works well. If you'd rather not bother, I don't see any option to GitHub Copilot for Business. Sure, they're slower to catch up to Cursor, but catch up they will. https://github.com/features/copilot/plans?cft=copilot_li.fea...

Which entity is going to steal your IP? Cursor / Windsurf or OpenAI / Anthropic?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#248

Post by mikrotikker »

emseetech wrote: post #142
xnorswap wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI autocomplete can be infuriating if like me, you like to browse the public methods and properties by dotting the type. The AI autocomplete sometimes kicks in and starts writing broken code using suggestions that don't exist and that prevents quickly exploring the actual methods available. I have largely disabled it now, which is a shame, because there are also times it feels like magic and I can see how it could be…

If I can, I map it to ctrl-; so I can bring it up when I need it. But I found once it was optional I hardly ever used it. I use Deepseek or others as a conversation partner or rubber duck, but I'm perfectly happy writing all my code myself. Maybe this approach needs a trendy name to counter the "vibe coding" hype.

"rubber botting"

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#249

Post by drcongo »

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.

Thank you for your kind offer, I shall take you up on it. Zed does have it built in. Now, please continue your disingenuous conversation by repeatedly claiming something that is demonstrably not true.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#250

Post by jillyboel »

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…

> is that productivity in the teams using tools like this has greatly increased

On the short term. Have fun debugging that mess in a year while your customers are yelling at you! I'll be available for hire to fix the mess you made which you clearly don't have the capability to understand :-)

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