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Cursor 3

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211–220 of 438 posts

Re: Cursor 3

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down. This is not really true anymore. Cursor has better cloud agents than Claude. The multi-agent experience is better, the worktree management is better. Tagging specific code or files in chat is better. It's hard for me to express the level of pain and frustration I feel going from Cursor to Claude…

I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging specific code" or "files" is likely the type of interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing. Instead they are defining architecture through specs and verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't have many prompts with CC referencing files…

It's always funny to see people's reactions to AI because it's the same they would treat junior engineers if nobody was around to raise an eyebrow. I've had a super micromanager who was absolutely insistent on naming variables and whether the open brackets were on the same line or a new line. I've also had people who just gave me the desired functionality and let me figure out the in-between and put in my own creative features, etc with just slight feedback.

We have OG Cursor for the micromanagers (who want to approve/deny every line) and things like Claude Code for those who are less picky about the how, and able to be amazed at what it creates.

Re: Cursor 3

#212
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they are not. Tired of this 40 year old terminal setback instead of having real and beautiful GUIs. Its fine for some kind of people but don't think what works for you is acceptable for the other 50% of us.

I agree with you but what they're launching here is not a beautiful GUI. It's minimalist (in a bad way) and not really innovative.

Oh yeah I am not talking about cursor, maybe what it felt like when it was 1.0. There will be a new breed of GUIs for people who don't touch terminals. Opencode web and devin code review have a little glimmer of that but it will probably look very different.

Re: Cursor 3

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vibe my way through my ideas. I look at LLM code sometimes to cry and cringe and then I beg LLM to have basic dignity and self respect to write code it shouldn’t be ashamed of. But then I instruct it to do something and it does it with speed I’m never able to achieve, even if the code is ugly. But it works.

Works until you discover subtle bugs hiding behind ugliness.

Yes, there are so many. As in hand-written code. I don’t take LLM written code for granted and I rewrite is sometimes. I know it’s not perfect. But it’s useful.

Compile code is not perfect also. But who does hand-written assembler anymore? Yes, LLM is another layer, it would be ugly and slower but it’s much faster to use.

Re: Cursor 3

#214
post #20

What would all these companies do without Microsoft shipping VS Code as open source, probably still stuck with vi and Emacs. Still curious which ones will survive when the AI gold diggers finally settle.

VS Code wouldn’t have won the mid-2010s editor wars if it was closed source (note that VS Code has not helped MS ramp people up to VS itself). The winner of that war was always going to be an open source editor, it was just Microsoft whose concept won out. Closed source editors like Coda failed to gain traction and even Sublime Text fell eventually. If MS ever decided to discontinue VS Code or relicense it, there wou…

> So to answer your question: they would be forking Atom (which I think would’ve won otherwise).

Atom was far slower than VS Code, despite both of them being built on Electron. I wouldn't have used Atom, but I use VS Code.

It is entirely possible that some other closed-source editor with a superior package/extension system would have won, or the "war" would have been postponed until Rust was ready enough for Zed to come along.

Re: Cursor 3

#215
post #203
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it puzzling whenever someone claims to reach "flow" or "zen state" when using these tools. Reviewing and testing code, constantly switching contexts, juggling model contexts, coming up with prompt incantations to coax the model into the right direction, etc., is so mentally taxing and full of interruptions and micromanagement that it's practically impossible to achieve any sort of "flow" or "zen state". This i…

Thank you so much. These comments let me believe in my sanity in an over-hyped world. I see how people think its more productive, but honestly I iterate on my code like 10-15 times before it goes into production, to make sure it logs the right things, it communicates intent clearly, the types are shared and defined where they should be. It’s stored in the right folder and so on. Whilst the laziness to just pass it to…

So don't write slow flakey unit tests? Or better yet, have the AI make them not slow and not flakey? Of if you wanna be old school, figure out why they're flakey yourself and then fix it? If it's a time thing then fix that or if it's a database thing then mock the hell out of that and integration test, but at this point if your tests suck, you only have yourself to blame.

Re: Cursor 3

#216
post #155

Man, I wish they'd keep the old philosophy of letting the developer drive and the agent assist. I feel like this design direction is leaning more towards a chat interface as a first class citizen and the code itself as a secondary concern. I really don't like that. Even when I'm using AI agents to write code, I still find myself spending most of my time reading and reasoning about code. Showing me little snippets of…

I guess they are assuming LLMs will just get better and better until youn don't look at code at all. Ignoring the fact that software will just keep getting more and more complex and interconnected... There will always be a new frontier or code and UX

They're targeting the 90% of code that doesn't really need to be looked at. Software is already so complex and interconnected that it is fully beyond human capabilities, each person only knows a tiny part of the stack. If you create your own full system from scratch, it's not going to be very generally useful.

Re: Cursor 3

#217
What is the special sauce of cursor. As a harness I assume it's mostly context management right? And maybe some defensive coding to mitigate probabilistic llms? Is there any big difference between cursor and Claude code?

Re: Cursor 3

#218
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have zero interest in these new "swarms of agents" they are trying to force on us from every direction. Good for you! Personally waiting for one agent to do something while I shove my thumb up my butt just waiting around for it to generate code that I'll have to fix anyway is peak opposite of flow state, so I've eagerly adopted agents (how much free will I had in that decision is for philosophers to decide) so ther…

I find it puzzling whenever someone claims to reach "flow" or "zen state" when using these tools. Reviewing and testing code, constantly switching contexts, juggling model contexts, coming up with prompt incantations to coax the model into the right direction, etc., is so mentally taxing and full of interruptions and micromanagement that it's practically impossible to achieve any sort of "flow" or "zen state". This i…

"My flow state is better than yours"? Point is, I get engaged with the thing and lose track of time.

Re: Cursor 3

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code wouldn’t have won the mid-2010s editor wars if it was closed source (note that VS Code has not helped MS ramp people up to VS itself). The winner of that war was always going to be an open source editor, it was just Microsoft whose concept won out. Closed source editors like Coda failed to gain traction and even Sublime Text fell eventually. If MS ever decided to discontinue VS Code or relicense it, there wou…

Sublime Text fell because VS Code was just better, not because it was closed source. I switched from Sublime Text to VS Code, and didn't care one bit how open or close either was. Not saying there aren't people who care, there are, but they are a small minority.

VS Code only got better because it was open source though, the community contributed so much. Sublime Text was vastly superior in the beginning in pretty much every way.
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