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How I write code using Cursor

arguingwithalgorithms.com

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Re: How I write code using Cursor

#311

Post by insane_dreamer »

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

For a lighter-weight IDE I use Zed

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#312

Post by baudpunk »

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 are a lot of people who take pride in how hard coding should be, and the blood and sweat they've invested.

If you look at AI from 10,000 feet, I think what you'll see is not AGI ruining the world, but rather LLMs limited by regression, eventually training on their own hallucinations, but good enough in their current state to be amazing tools. I think that Cursor, and products like it, are to coding what Photoshop was to artists. There are still people creating oil paintings, but the industry — and the profits — are driven by artists using Photoshop.

Cursor makes coders more efficient, and therefore more profitable, and anyone NOT using Cursor in a hiring pool of people who ARE using it will be left holding the short straw.

If you are an expert level software engineer, you will recognize where Cursor's output is bad, and you will be able to rapidly remediate. That still makes you more valuable and more efficient. If you're an expert level software engineer, and you don't use Cursor, you will be much slower, and it is just going to reduce your value more and more over time.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#313

Post by achierius »

bsaul wrote: post #152
namaria wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're happy to have gone from thinking of cloning something to cloning something using a cloning tool quickly?

Your remark raises a question : how much of your daily work is truely original ? Unless you work in R&D i've got some bad news for you..

You don't have to be a researcher to do original work. Out of ten people on my team one has a PhD, but we're all doing more-or-less unique work a large fraction of the time.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#314

Post by [deleted] »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #202
zkry wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that tools like Cursor doesn't really seem to make difference in the end. The good software developers are still the good software developers, regardless of editors. I don't think you should be upset or worried that people aren't adopting these tools as you think they should. If the tool really lives up to its hype then the non-adopters will fall behind and, for example, be forced to switch to Cursive. T…

> The good software developers are still the good software developers Correct. Because they know they need to use the correct tools for the job. > If the tool really lives up to its hype then the non-adopters will fall behind This is already happening. I'm able to out-deploy many of my competitors because I'm using Cursor. Have you actually spent much time with Cursor? The comparison to "Jump to definition" is pretty…

[deleted]

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#315

Post by batesy »

ciconia wrote: post #66

Watching the videos in the article, the constantly changing suggested completions seem really distracting. Personally, I find this kind of workflow totally counter-productive. My own programming workflow is ~90% mental work / doing sketches with pen & paper, and ~10% writing the code. When I do sit down to write the code, I know already what I want to write, don't need suggestions.

You can create markdown files containing all the planning you did and Cursor will have all of that as context to give you better suggestions. This type of prompting is what gives amazing results - not just relying on out of the box magic, which I think a lot of people are expecting.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#316

Post by batesy »

elashri wrote: post #16

My problem with all AI code assistants is usually the context. I am not sure how cursor fare in this regard but I always struggle to feed the model enough of the code project to be useful for me on a level more than providing line per line suggestion (which copilot does anyway). I don't have experience with cursor or cody (other alternative) and how they tackle this problem by using embeddings (which I suppose have s…

It's the users job to provide the context the LLM needs in plain language instruction. Not just relying on the LLM to magically understand everything based on the codebase.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#317

Post by hipadev23 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #193

From what I see, it's not better than GitHub Copilot for my use case. I work in large code bases, where the code in one files depends on the code in other files. Copilot seems to only be aware of code in current file, unless I write very long prompts to direct it to specifically look in some other files. So for making changes to existing code, Copilot isn't helpful and neither seems to Cursor. I can use Copilot to wr…

From my experience using both:

* Cursor is massively faster than Copilot

* Cursor is absolutely aware of the codebase when you add it to the workspace (ctrl/cmd+b)

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#319

Post by exe34 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #247
exe34 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's an indictment of the proliferation of shitty frameworks and documentation. it's not hard to figure out such a combination and then keep a template of it lying around for future projects. you don't have to reach for the latest and shiniest at the start of every project.

> you don't have to reach for the latest and shiniest at the start of every project. Except you kind of do, because if you're working frontend or mobile, then your chosen non-shitty tech stack is probably lacking some Important Language Innovations or Security Featuers that Google or Microsoft forced on the industry since last time you worked with that stack. (Yes, that's mostly just an indictment of the state of our…

every time you capitulate, you tell them that you're happy to play along, bring more "innovation" so you keep having to run very hard just to stay in place.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#320

Post by davidczech »

taldo wrote: post #178

Cursor has been an enabler for unfamiliar corners of development. Mind you, it's not a foolproof tool that writes correct code on the first try or anything close to that. I've been in compilers, storage, and data backends for 15ish years, and had to do a little project that required recording audio clips in a browser and sending them over a websocket. Cursor helped me do it in about 5 minutes, while it would've taken…

I've had similar experiences. I've basically disengaged any form of AI code generation. I do find it useful to pointing me to interesting/relevant symbols and API's however, but it doesn't save me any time connecting plumbing, nor is that really a difficult thing for any programmer to do.
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