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Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

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Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#271

Post by davidmurdoch »

rco8786 wrote: post #180
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.

This is where I landed too. Used Cursor for a while before realizing that it was actually slowing me down because the PR cycle took so much longer, due to all the subtle bugs in generated code. Went back to VSCode with a tuned down Copilot and use the chat or inline prompt for generating specific bits of code.

What is a "PR cycle"?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#272

Post by Draiken »

alentred wrote: post #262
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.

To be fair, I think the most value is added by Agent modes, not autocomplete. And I agree that AI-autocomplete is really quite annoying, personally I disable it too. But coding agents can indeed save some time writing well-defined code and be of great help when debugging. But then again, when they don't work on a first prompt, I would likely just write the thing in Vim myself instead of trying to convince the agent.…

Are you using these in your day job to complete real world tasks or in greenfield projects?

I simply cannot see how I can tell an agent to implement anything I have to do in a real day job unless it's a feature so simple I could do it in a few minutes. Even those the AI will likely screw it up since it sucks at dealing with existing code, best practices, library versions, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#273

Post by atonse »

Aeolun wrote: post #215
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have Cursor’s “tab” feature?

Sort of. The quality is light and day different (cursor feels like magic, Zed feels like a chore).

I can second this. I really do want to move to Zed full time but the code completion is nowhere near as useful or "smart" as cursor's yet.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#274

Post by thesurlydev »

I use the Windsurf Cascade plugin in JetBrains IDEs. My current flow is I rough-in the outline of what I want and have generally use the plugin to improve what I have by creating tests, performance improvements, or just making things more idiomatic. I need to invest time to add rules at both a global and project level which should make the overall experience event better.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#275

Post by klinquist »

Draiken wrote: post #272
alentred wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think the most value is added by Agent modes, not autocomplete. And I agree that AI-autocomplete is really quite annoying, personally I disable it too. But coding agents can indeed save some time writing well-defined code and be of great help when debugging. But then again, when they don't work on a first prompt, I would likely just write the thing in Vim myself instead of trying to convince the agent.…

Are you using these in your day job to complete real world tasks or in greenfield projects? I simply cannot see how I can tell an agent to implement anything I have to do in a real day job unless it's a feature so simple I could do it in a few minutes. Even those the AI will likely screw it up since it sucks at dealing with existing code, best practices, library versions, etc.

I am. I've spent some time developing cursor rules where I describe best practices, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#276

Post by Draiken »

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.

Same here. It's extremely distracting to see the random garbage that the autocomplete keeps trying to do.

I said this in another comment but I'll repeat the question: where are these 2x, 10x or even 1.5x increases in output? I don't see more products, more features, less bugs or anything related to that since this "AI revolution".

I keep seeing this being repeated ad nauseam without any real backing of hard evidence.

If this was true and every developer had even a measly 30% increase in productivity, it would be like a team of 10 is now 13. The amount of code being produced would be substantially more and as a result we should see an absolute boom in new... everything.

New startups, new products, new features, bugs fixed and so much more. But I see absolutely nothing but more bullshit startups that use APIs to talk to these models with a few instructions.

Please someone show me how I'm wrong because I'd absolutely love to magically become way more productive.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#277

Post by klinquist »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #271
rco8786 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I landed too. Used Cursor for a while before realizing that it was actually slowing me down because the PR cycle took so much longer, due to all the subtle bugs in generated code. Went back to VSCode with a tuned down Copilot and use the chat or inline prompt for generating specific bits of code.

What is a "PR cycle"?

open a pull request, reviewer finds a bug and asks for changes, you make changes and re-request a review...

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#278

Post by davidmurdoch »

klinquist wrote: post #277
davidmurdoch wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "PR cycle"?

open a pull request, reviewer finds a bug and asks for changes, you make changes and re-request a review...

That's what I was afraid of, I'd never think anyone submitting AI-generated code wouldn't first read it themselves before asking others to review it!

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#279

Post by kaycey2022 »

hn_throw2025 wrote: post #253
kaycey2022 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much did that cost you? How long did you spend reading and testing the results?

That wasn’t really the point I was getting at, but as you asked… The reading doesn’t involve much more than a cursory (no pun intended) glance, and I didn’t test more than I would have tested something I had written manually.

Maybe it wasn't your point. But cost of development is a very important factor, considering some of the thinking models burn tokens like no tomorrow. Accuracy is another. Maybe your script is kind of trivial/inconsequential so it doesn't matter if the output has some bugs as long as it seems to work. There are a lot of throwaway scripts we write, for which LLMs are an excellent tool to use.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#280

Post by benterix »

scottmas wrote: post #241
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.

Legal issues aside (you are the legal owner of that code or you checked with one), and provided it's small enough, just ask an LLM to write a script to do so . If the code base is too big, you might have luck choosing the right parts. The right balance of inclusions and exclusions can work miracles here.
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