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Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

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Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#211

Post by o11c »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #95
ModernMech wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge problem. I just can't get past it and I get burned by it every time I try one of these products. Cursor in particular was one of the worst; the very first time I allowed it to look at my codebase, it hallucinated a missing brace (my code parsed fine), "helpfully" inserted it, and then proceeded to break everything. How am I supposed to trust and work with such a tool? To me, it seems like the equivalent o…

Versioning in source control for even personal projects just got far more important.

Thankfully modern source control doesn't reuse user-supplied filenames for its internals. In the dark ages, I destroyed more than one checkout using commands of the form:

  find -name '*somepattern*' -exec clobbering command ...

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#212

Post by ryandrake »

schmichael wrote: post #168
yodsanklai wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not supposed to trust the tool, you're supposed to review and rework the code before submitting for external review. I use AI for rather complex tasks. It's impressive. It can make a bunch of non-trivial changes to several files, and have the code compile without warnings. But I need to iterate a few times so that the code looks like what I want. That being said, I also lose time pretty regularly. There's a le…

> You're not supposed to trust the tool This is just an incredible statement. I can't think of another development tool we'd say this about. I'm not saying you're wrong, or that it's wrong to have tools we can't just, just... wow... what a sea change.

Imagine if your compiler just randomly and non-deterministically compiled valid code to incorrect binaries, and the tool's developer couldn't really tell you why it happens, how often it was expected to happen, how severe the problem was expected to be, and told you to just not trust your compiler to create correct machine code.

Imagine if your calculator app randomly and non-deterministically performed arithmetic incorrectly, and you similarly couldn't get correctness expectations from the developer.

Imagine if any of your communication tools randomly and non-deterministically translated your messages into gibberish...

I think we'd all throw away such tools, but we are expected to accept it if it's an "AI tool?"

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#213

Post by tptacek »

ericwood wrote: post #209
cachvico wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it all the time, and it has accelerated my output massively. Now, I don't trust the output - I review everything, and it often goes wrong. You have to know how to use it. But I would never go back. Often it comes up with more elegant solutions than I would have. And when you're working with a new platform, or some unfamiliar library that it already knows, it's an absolute godsend. I'm also damn proud of my own…

I have a hard time being sold on “yea it’s wrong a lot, also you have to spend more time than you already do on code review.” Getting to sit down and write the code is the most enjoyable part of the job, why would I deprive myself of that? By the time the problem has been defined well enough to explain it to an LLM sitting down and writing the code is typically very simple.

You're giving the game away when you talk about the joy LLMs are robbing from you. I think we all intuit why people don't like the idea of big parts of their jobs being automated away! But that's not an argument on the merits. Our entire field is premised on automating people's jobs away, so it's always a little rich to hear programmers kvetching about it being done to them.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#214

Post by falcor84 »

parliament32 wrote: post #153
falcor84 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what?! Slack got destroyed by Teams? You seem to be living a few parallel universes away from the one I'm in.

Yes, "destroyed" is apt. See the graph under "Slack vs Microsoft Teams: Users" here: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/slack-statistics/

Interesting, but isn't it just because Teams is bundled and integrated with MS Office? I couldn't find any specific stats on revenue or how many businesses actually choose to pay for Teams specifically.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#215

Post by myko »

falcor84 wrote: post #70
rvz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack was a similar thing. IPO'd at 10 million users with 400M in revenue but got destroyed by Microsoft thanks to Teams. Cursor is at a worse position and at greater risk of ending up like Slack very quickly and Microsoft will do the exact same thing they did to Slack. This time by extinguishing (EEE) them by racing prices of VSCode + Copilot close to zero, until it is free. The best thing Cursor should do is for Op…

Wait, what?! Slack got destroyed by Teams? You seem to be living a few parallel universes away from the one I'm in.

It's sad but true that many orgs went from Slack to Teams due to Microsoft's monopolistic sales tactics. Sucks because now I use Teams every day.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#216

Post by ericwood »

Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #182
williamcotton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty mean spirited way to approach this subject. I think the creators of Redis and Django are very capable and self-respecting software developers.

Is it just me or has there been a wave of delusional people on Hacker News completely neglecting new advancements in technology? The two most common technologies I see having this type of discourse are AI coding and containers. Either everyone here is a low level quantum database 5D graphics pipeline developer with a language from the future that AI hasn't yet learned, or some people are in denial.

It’s totally valid to see a new piece of tech, try it, say it’s not for you, and move on. With LLMs it feels forced-fed, and simply saying “eh I’m good, no thanks” isn’t enough. Lots of hype and headlines on how it’s going to take our jobs and replace us, pressure from management to adopt it.

Some new trends make perfect sense to me and I’ll adopt them. I’ve let some pass me by and rarely regretted it. That doesn’t make me a luddite.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#217

Post by infecto »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #194
infecto wrote: post #126

Fingers crossed the users will go left are all the noisy ones. I still enjoy using Cursor but their forum is filled with too many posts about $20 being too expensive or they need to raise caps or Cursor is the worse tool in the world.

[flagged]

Yes, I’m complaining about complainers. It’s the circle of life on Hacker News, someone always has to play the food chain’s top predator: the mildly annoyed power user.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#218

Post by ryandrake »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #199
theonething wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of another development tool we'd say this about. Because no other dev tool actually generates unique code like AI does. So you treat it like the other components of your team that generates code, the other developers. Do you trust other developers to write good code without mistakes without getting it reviewed by others. Of course not.

"Do you trust other developers to write good code without mistakes without getting it reviewed by others." Literally yes. Test coverage and QA to catch bugs sure but needing everything manually reviewed by someone else sounds like working in a sweatshop full of intern-level code bootcamp graduates, or if you prefer an absolute dumpster fire of incompetence.

I would accept mistakes and inconsistency from a human, especially one not very experienced or skilled. But I expect perfection and consistency from a machine. When I command my computer to do something, I expect it to do it correctly, the same way every time, to convert a particular input to an exact particular output, every time. I don't expect it to guess, or randomly insert garbage, or behave non-deterministically. Those things are called defects(bugs) and I'd want them to be fixed.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#219

Post by adriand »

pfg_ wrote: post #134
adriand wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code with standard copilot for tab completion and Aider in a terminal window for all the heavier lifts, asking questions, architecting etc. And it’s cheap! I’ve been using it with OpenRouter (lets you easily switch models and providers) and my $10 of credits lasted weeks. Granted, I also use Claude a lot in the browser.

Copilot's tab completion is significantly worse than cursor's in my experience (only tried free copilot)

Paid Copilot is pretty crap too to be honest. I don’t know why it’s so bad.

Re: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellations

#220

Post by seabird »

Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #182
williamcotton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty mean spirited way to approach this subject. I think the creators of Redis and Django are very capable and self-respecting software developers.

Is it just me or has there been a wave of delusional people on Hacker News completely neglecting new advancements in technology? The two most common technologies I see having this type of discourse are AI coding and containers. Either everyone here is a low level quantum database 5D graphics pipeline developer with a language from the future that AI hasn't yet learned, or some people are in denial.

I'm primarily an embedded firmware developer. Gas/electric power products. Ada codebase, so it's off the beaten path but nothing academic by any stretch of the imagination. I have a comprehensive reference manual that describes exactly how the language should be working, and don't need an LLM to regurgitate it to me. I have comprehensive hardware and programming manuals for the MCUs I program that describe exactly how the hardware should be working, and don't need and LLM to regurgitate it to me. I actually really specifically don't want the information transformed, it is engineered to be the way it is, and to change its presentation strips it of a lot of its power.

I deal with way too much torque and way too much electrical energy to trust an LLM. Saving a few minutes here and there isn't worth blowing up expensive prototypes or getting hurt over.

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