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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?

#91

Post by aeve890 »

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:…

>I let Cursor handle the basics - basically acting as a glorified multi-file autocomplete.

Same experience. I'm in no need to let the AI write large, real working code. But it's amazing for fast refactoring, function signatures, boilerplate, etc. The real boring parts. I only wish it wouldn't be so eager to try to dump a 50 lines of bullshit code every time. But for small changes, super cool.

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

#92

Post by itsoktocry »

level09 wrote: post #89

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.

>they transform your codebase into embeddings (knowledge), giving them a much greater advantage in understanding larger contexts and effectively acting on the code.

Is this true? Isn't the context size controlled by the model? Is there any difference (outside convenience) to pasting your code in the web interface?

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

#93

Post by fmxsh »

bilekas wrote: post #55
cwegener wrote: post #11

I don't use IDEs to begin with. I use a text editor, since I am a UNIX man. So, I don't even have a reason to look at the "AI" flavor of an IDE. The closest thing to an AI IDE that I have tried out were tools like AIDER and Jack's "goose" agent. Neither of those specialized tools has been satisfactory. They all performed worse than just the LLM IMO. I am sticking to crafting my own context that I supply to the LLM. T…

I didn't know Unix users were not able to use IDEs. The more you know /s Edit : Sarcastic

I don't know about Unix users, but perhaps, instead, it is they are able to not use IDEs.

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

#94

Post by brostoffed »

Here's something that i made which helps me out on a daily basis for the IDEA platform.

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/26658-contextbuilder

> ContextBuilder is a plugin that lets you combine and manage code files for AI prompts or other tooling. Features include a tool window with the same UI as the old ContextHistoryDialog, filetype exclusions, and a history manager.

You're able to select a directory, multiple directories, a file, multiple files and or a combination of them. After determining your selection, Right Click in the Project Explorer and you'll see "Generate Context".

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

#95

Post by hkchad »

I'm using JetBrains w/ GitHub CoPilot, the amount of context it has around what I'm working on is next level, it's not just 'code complete' but it's 'context aware' as well, say for example I need to open a csv and parse out a few columns by the time I have named the file it's giving me the entire block of code WITH the proper column names of the files, all you do is hit tab and refactor. You won't get that just w/ copy/paste.

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

#96

Post by gardenhedge »

I use Chat and Paste with LLMs. I have tried Cursor and Co-Pilot but they both kinda of suck in their own ways. I feel like understanding of the code completely goes away with Cursor since it's doing it's own thing. There's benefits to that but then it is challenging to debug since you don't know about the codebase. With Chat and Paste I think more about what I am putting in my codebase.

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

#97

Post by dangus »

munksbeer wrote: post #90
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.

What's so difficult to understand? How do you get your other software at work?

The developers now have access to the license to the software, probably via their work email address.

I don't think the person you're replying to necessarily said that they are forcing their developers to use the tool.

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

#98

Post by dangus »

LanceJones wrote: post #6

I've been using Windsurf for a few weeks. I'm a novice programmer trying to build a web app using React and NextJS. The "context-in-the-codebase" thing for AI-based IDEsis overrated IMO. To extract the most from it, you have to remember to @mention the files. If you don't remember to @mention specific files, the agent simply tries to perform searches (i.e., it has access to that tool) on the files and folders until i…

I don't think you're quite right about this, as I've noticed (at least in Cursor) that appropriate context tends to be pulled in automatically.

What I do notice is that the AI systems seem to forget to pull in a lot of context as the project size grows. It's almost as if there's something of a limit to the amount of input data, either to manage costs or compute cycles or something like that.

When I start "vibecoding" it goes really well in the beginning but then when the project grows in complexity, asking it to do something relatively simple falls apart as the AI "forgets" to do that really simple thing in every applicable place (e.g., removing a feature that is no longer needed).

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

#99

Post by reidbarber »

My current favorite (and free) workflow:

1. Drop project files into https://files2prompt.com to copy a prompt with all file contents

2. Paste into https://aistudio.google.com/ and set a low (or 0) temperature and low top_p

Since Gemini 2.5 Pro is free in AI Studio at the moment, and there's a 1M token limit, this works for most things I need. Cursor is better in some cases where I need a bunch of small edits across a bunch of different files.

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

#100

Post by glohbalrob »

reidbarber wrote: post #99

My current favorite (and free) workflow: 1. Drop project files into https://files2prompt.com to copy a prompt with all file contents 2. Paste into https://aistudio.google.com/ and set a low (or 0) temperature and low top_p Since Gemini 2.5 Pro is free in AI Studio at the moment, and there's a 1M token limit, this works for most things I need. Cursor is better in some cases where I need a bunch of small edits across a…

Just curious, why change the temp to 0
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