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Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

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Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#81

Post by binary132 »

fhd2 wrote: post #40

I settled on gptel, which is an LLM package for Emacs. It's kind of a mix of both approaches: 1. You have chats right there in the editor, easy to copy/paste and manage context/history without switching to a browser. You can also quickly add files or portions of files to the context or remove them again. 2. You can choose which model you want to use for what, granted you have an API key. 3. You can quickly highlight…

FWIW I have been using gptel with local inference by a deepcoder 14b q6 and llama.cpp and it’s not too bad. But it can’t handle big asks. 24GB of VRAM is not enough to make local inference smart enough to be really useful. It’s okayish at things like writing commit messages or reformatting / refactoring local regions of code. 32B quants are slow and not that much better.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#82

Post by swah »

I'm still stuck pre "thinking" and pre "web research" features in terms of what I feel works best (vs delay to get a response..).

Very surprised when I asked Cursor to diagram some code, saves me so much time. I wish it would output a better format than ASCII.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#83

Post by caleblloyd »

clarity_89 wrote: post #31
SeanAnderson wrote: post #16

I'm a staff software engineer doing a mix of front-end and back-end with emphasis on front-end. I use both Cursor on Claude 3.7 and ChatGPT on 4o/o3. Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o, but it's a good workhorse. I let Cursor handle the basics - basically acting as a glorified multi-file autocomplete. I think through common problems with 4o, tough problems with o3, I copy all of Svelte's docs into 4o ( https:…

> Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o What do you mean by that? You can use 4o model in Cursor?

Cursor tries to save more money on context than ChatGPT. So when both are targeting GPT 4o, the ChatGPT App will incorporate more context history and memories than Cursor.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#84

Post by lopatin »

londons_explore wrote: post #28
lilatree wrote: post #27

What about projects where secrecy matters? How do hedge funds use these? Are you comfortable feeding the secret sauce to Cursor?

Code is nowhere near as valuable as most people imagine....

I'd day that hedge funds and quant trading firms are an exception to this rule. If you get access to their model training code, order execution code, and especially their trading strategies, then that is literally valuable since you'd be able to replicate their success.

This is unlike most other companies, say Spotify, where if you get access to their source, there's still not much that you can do with it.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#85

Post by gravity9 »

I've tried every conceivable combo, and I've settled into using GPT o3 (outside of an IDE to do Deep Research on the tech that I am developing an app with first), then taking that context into VS Code (as markdown), and using Claude Code within VS Code to begin generating component files. I typically stay there until I finish the app, with frequent visits to Claude 3.7 Sonnet (on the website) for more creative inspiration and code snippets when Claude Code gets in a rut.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#86

Post by spmurrayzzz »

Zed strikes a good balance I think with their non-agentic text threads feature. You use slash commands to add whatever you need to the context (single files, directories, highlighted selections, etc) and interact with a conventional chat interface from there. The prompt library also lets you store convenient system prompts if you have a diverse task domain.

You can of course use their new agentic features which can automate a lot of the context management via tool use, but I find that to be a waste of time and resources for the majority of tasks I care about.

I currently manage my own fork to use a custom FIM completion provider I built, that tends to do most of the heavy lifting for me in terms of anything AI-generated.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#87

Post by throwaw12 »

clarity_89 wrote: post #31
SeanAnderson wrote: post #16

I'm a staff software engineer doing a mix of front-end and back-end with emphasis on front-end. I use both Cursor on Claude 3.7 and ChatGPT on 4o/o3. Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o, but it's a good workhorse. I let Cursor handle the basics - basically acting as a glorified multi-file autocomplete. I think through common problems with 4o, tough problems with o3, I copy all of Svelte's docs into 4o ( https:…

> Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o What do you mean by that? You can use 4o model in Cursor?

I think part of the reason is, ChatGPT has additional system prompt in chat, API doesn't have.

even if both companies use same model (OpenAI and Cursor), system prompt has a huge impact on results

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#88

Post by fho »

bilekas wrote: post #62
fho wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true and if only then by choice. VSCode/Cursor run natively under Linux.

It obviously wasn't obvious enough but I was being sarcastic. My fault anyway, pre coffee.

Fair enough... Honestly, I wasn't using Cursor for a long time because I thought that, as a MS project, it wouldn't be available on Linux.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#89

Post by level09 »

They are significantly better! IDEs aren’t just like LLMs; they transform your codebase into embeddings (knowledge), giving them a much greater advantage in understanding larger contexts and effectively acting on the code. Plus, they come with proper tool integrations, allowing them to apply changes seamlessly while including fallback mechanisms to handle any issues during the process.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#90

Post by munksbeer »

ghiculescu wrote: post #14

I rolled out Claude Code and Cursor to my whole company. They’re really much better than copy paste. And very affordable compared to professional developer wages. Wrote about it: https://ghiculescu.substack.com/p/nobody-codes-here-anymore

I'm relatively ignorant in this respect, but how do you "roll out Cursor"? Does that mean developers must now switch to using the Cursor IDE? That's quite an ask. I really don't think I'd like having to switch IDEs at this point.
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