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How I write code using Cursor

arguingwithalgorithms.com

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Re: How I write code using Cursor

#331

Post by never_inline »

dexwiz wrote: post #112
never_inline wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Useful cases include * figuring out how to X in an API - eg "write method dl_file(url, file) to download file from url using requests in a streaming manner" * Brainstorming which libraries / tools / approaches exist to do a given task. Google can miss some. AI is a nice complement for Google.

I don’t even trust the API based exercises anymore unless it’s a stable and well documented API. Too many times I’ve been bitten by an AI mixing and matching method signatures from different versions, using outdated approaches, mixing in apis from similar libraries, or just completely hallucinating a method. Even if I load the entire library docs into the context, I haven’t found one that’s completely reliable.

It just has to be popular and common boilerplate like the example I gave.

It's hard with less popular APIs. It will almost always get something wrong. In such cases, I read docs, search sourcegraph / GitHub, and finally check the source code.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#332

Post by cynicalpeace »

eikenberry wrote: post #326
cynicalpeace wrote: post #175

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…

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 o…

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.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#333

Post by cynicalpeace »

raincole wrote: post #330
cynicalpeace wrote: post #175

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…

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 tha…

Meanwhile other commenters say:

> I don't use it because I already use JetBrains (Pycharm, mostly). Hard to see any value add of Cursor over that.

lol

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#334

Post by cynicalpeace »

baudpunk wrote: post #312

I recommend that naysayers for technologies like Cursor watch the documentary Jurassic Punk. When comparing the current AI landscape to the era of computer graphics emerging in film, the parallels are pretty staggering to me. There is a very vocal old guard who are stubborn about ditching their 10,000+ hours master-level expertise to start from zero and adapt to the new paradigm. There is a lot of skepticism. There a…

Good take. It really makes you realize that as much as engineers like to pretend they're purely rational and analytical, we're just as emotional as everyone else.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#335

Post by flir »

kccqzy wrote: post #263
falconertc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't also factor in the time to learn Pandoc (and to relearn it if you haven't used it lately). This is also just one of many daily use cases for these tools. The time it takes to know how to use a dozen tools like this adds up when an LLM can just do them all.

This is actually how I would use AI: if I forgot how to do a conversion task, I would ask AI to tell me the command so that I can run it without rejiggering my memory first. The pandoc command is literally one line with a few flags; it's easily reviewable. Then I run pandoc myself. Same thing with the multitude of other rarely used but extremely useful tools such as jq. In other words, I want AI to help me with invok…

I do that constantly. jq's syntax is especially opaque to me. "I've got some JSON formatted like . Give me a jq command that does .

Google, but better.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#336

Post by yladiz »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #298
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm able to out-deploy This is a very poor metric for your efficacy as a software engineer and if you optimize for this, you're gonna have a bad time long term.

You're right. MRR is a better metric. Gotten great MRR via Cursor too.

How’s your ARR?

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#337

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

viraptor wrote: post #70
pama wrote: post #18

What are the closest Emacs packages and flows for something similar to Cursor? Is the ability to use a tab in this way something that can be simply instructed or finetuned?

Not in the same way. Places like Cursor and Continue have their own tuned and minimal models which can work really fast. In an interview, Cursor people also mentioned some extra magic they do like streaming the changes/context in as you type and potentially doing some speculative processing before you even type things. You would need to write lots of new code which, as far as I understand, doesn't exist in the open s…

Anthropic have a streaming API (incrementally stream responses back to client) that I believe Cursor uses.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#338

Post by TeMPOraL »

adamc wrote: post #271
TeMPOraL wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it takes 30 seconds, including the time to install pandoc On some speedrunning competition maybe? Just tested on my work machine, `sudo apt-get pandoc` took 11 seconds to complete, and it was this fast only because I already had all the depndencies installed . Also I don't think you'll be able to fulfill the "using another blog post as a style reference" part of GP's requirements - unless, again, you're some grand-…

Installing pandoc is basically a one-time cost that is amortized over its uses, so... why worry about it? Relying on the compiler to catch every mistake is a pretty limited strategy.

> Installing pandoc is basically a one-time cost that is amortized over its uses, so... why worry about it?

Because space of problems LLMs of today solve well with trivial prompts is vast, far greater than any single classical tool covers. If you're comparing solutions to 100 random problems, you have to count in those one-time costs, because you'll need to use some 50-100 different tools to get through them all.

> Relying on the compiler to catch every mistake is a pretty limited strategy.

No, you're relying on the compiler to catch every mistake than can be caught mechanically - exactly the kind of things humans suck at. It's kind of the entire point of errors and warnings in compilers, or static typing for that matter.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#339

Post by eikenberry »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #332
eikenberry wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#340

Post by raincole »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #333
raincole wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

Meanwhile other commenters say: > I don't use it because I already use JetBrains (Pycharm, mostly). Hard to see any value add of Cursor over that. lol

I don't blame them though. Honestly this was the exact thought I had before I tried Cursor.
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