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How I write code using Cursor

arguingwithalgorithms.com

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Re: How I write code using Cursor

#341

Post by JamesSwift »

DeathArrow wrote: post #285
scosman wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a TLDR from all the issues I'm reading in this thread: - It's gotten way better in the last 6 months. Both models (Sonnet 3.5 and new October Sonnet 3.5), and tooling (Cursor). If you last tried Co-pilot, you should probably give it another look. It's also going to keep getting better. [1] - It can make errors, and expect to do some code review and guiding. However the error rates are going way way down [1]. I'…

Yes, it works for new code and simple cases. If you have large code bases, it doesn't have the context and you have to baby it, telling which files and functions it should look into before attempting to write something. That takes a lot of time. Yes, it can do simple tasks, like you said, writing a call to get the environment variables. But imagine you work on a basket calculation service, where you have base item pr…

Are you suggesting you would inline all that logic if you hand-rolled the method? Probably not, right? You would have a high-level algorithm of easily-understood parts. Why wouldnt the AI be able to 1) write that high-level algorithm and then 2) subsequently write the individual parts?

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#342

Post by adamontherun »

I've been working with Cursor for a few months. I learned quickly to stay away from the hype around creating entire features using Composer. Found a ton of value in using it to work with context from the codebase as well as external documentation.

Shared my 8 pro tips in this post towards the bottom https://betaacid.co/blog/cursor-dethrones-copilot

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#343

Post by snowfarthing »

JamesBarney wrote: post #168
miningape wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a some good prompting and a little editing can write code good I agree with a good developer "baby-sitting" the model it's capable of producing good code. Although this is more because the developer is skilled at producing good code so they can tell an AI where it should refactor and how (or they can just do it themselves). If you've spent significant time refitting AI code, it's not really AI code anymore its…

I've spent soo much time in my life reviewing bad or mediocre code from mediocre devs and 95% of the time the code sonnet 3.5 generates is at least as correct and 99% of the time more legible than what a mediocre dev generates. It's well commented, the naming is great it rarely tries to get overly clever, it usually does some amount of error handling, it'll at least try to read the documentation, it finds most of the…

It's easy to forget one major problem with this: we all have been mediocre devs at some point in our lives -- and there will always be times when we're mediocre, even with all our experience, because we can't be experienced in everything.

If these tools replace mediocre devs, leaving only the great devs to produce the code, what are we going to do when the great devs of today age out, and there's no one to replace them with, because all those mediocre devs went on to do something else, instead of hone their craft until they became great devs?

Or maybe we'll luck out, and by the time that happens, our AIs will be good enough that they can program everything, and do it even better than the best of us.

If you can call that "lucking out" -- some of us might disagree.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#344

Post by kristopolous »

baudpunk wrote: post #312

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 a…

I think llms are useful and also that cursor is not.

It's a specific thing and it doesn't suit me.

I've seen the glittery eyed hype on hn before and it basically means it will become a common tool. Whether it's good or not, that's a different question.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#345

Post by cyral »

yunwal wrote: post #204
CrendKing wrote: post #32

I've been using AI to solve isolated problems, mainly as a replacement of search engine specifically for programming. I'm still not convinced of these "write whole block of code for me" type of use case. Here's my arguments against the videos from the article. 1. Snake case to camelCase. Even without AI we can already complete these tasks easily. VSCode itself has command of "Transform to Camel Case" for selection. I…

> Snake case to camelCase > VSCode itself has command of "Transform to Camel Case" I never understand arguments like this. I have no idea what the shortcut for this command is. I could learn this shortcut, sure, but tomorrow I’ll need something totally different. Surely people can see the value of having a single interface that can complete pretty much any small-to-medium-complexity data transformation. It feels like…

Exactly. I think some commenters are taking this example too literally. It's not about this specific transformation, but how often you need to do similar transformations and don't know the exact shortcut or regex or whatever to make it happen. I can describe what I want in three seconds and be done with it. Literal dropbox.png going on in this thread.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#346

Post by kristiandupont »

kccqzy wrote: post #251
scosman wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re:trust. It just works using Sonnet 3.5. It's gained my trust. I do read it after (again, I'm more a code reviewer role). People make mistakes too, and I think it's error rate for repeititve tasks is below most people's. I also learned how to prompt it. I'd tell it to just add formatting without changing content in the first pass. Then in a separate pass ask it to fix spelling/grammar issues. The diffs are easy to r…

Why are you comparing its error rate for repetitive tasks with most people? For such mechanical tasks we already have fully deterministic algorithms to do it, and the error rate of these traditional algorithms is zero. You aren't usually asking a junior assistant to manually do such conversion, so it doesn't make sense to compare its error rate with humans. Normalizing this kind of computer errors when there should b…

The OP said they had it use another HTML page as a style reference. Pandoc couldn't do that. Just like millions of other specific tasks.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#347

Post by kccqzy »

kristiandupont wrote: post #346
kccqzy wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you comparing its error rate for repetitive tasks with most people? For such mechanical tasks we already have fully deterministic algorithms to do it, and the error rate of these traditional algorithms is zero. You aren't usually asking a junior assistant to manually do such conversion, so it doesn't make sense to compare its error rate with humans. Normalizing this kind of computer errors when there should b…

The OP said they had it use another HTML page as a style reference. Pandoc couldn't do that. Just like millions of other specific tasks.

That's just a matter of copying over some CSS. It takes the same effort as copying the output of AI so that's not even taking extra time.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#348

Post by scosman »

kccqzy wrote: post #251
scosman wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re:trust. It just works using Sonnet 3.5. It's gained my trust. I do read it after (again, I'm more a code reviewer role). People make mistakes too, and I think it's error rate for repeititve tasks is below most people's. I also learned how to prompt it. I'd tell it to just add formatting without changing content in the first pass. Then in a separate pass ask it to fix spelling/grammar issues. The diffs are easy to r…

Why are you comparing its error rate for repetitive tasks with most people? For such mechanical tasks we already have fully deterministic algorithms to do it, and the error rate of these traditional algorithms is zero. You aren't usually asking a junior assistant to manually do such conversion, so it doesn't make sense to compare its error rate with humans. Normalizing this kind of computer errors when there should b…

Apply the style of B to A is not deterministic, nor are there prior tools that could do it.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#349

Post by scosman »

DeathArrow wrote: post #285
scosman wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a TLDR from all the issues I'm reading in this thread: - It's gotten way better in the last 6 months. Both models (Sonnet 3.5 and new October Sonnet 3.5), and tooling (Cursor). If you last tried Co-pilot, you should probably give it another look. It's also going to keep getting better. [1] - It can make errors, and expect to do some code review and guiding. However the error rates are going way way down [1]. I'…

Yes, it works for new code and simple cases. If you have large code bases, it doesn't have the context and you have to baby it, telling which files and functions it should look into before attempting to write something. That takes a lot of time. Yes, it can do simple tasks, like you said, writing a call to get the environment variables. But imagine you work on a basket calculation service, where you have base item pr…

What's the logic here? "I haven't seen it so it doesn't exist?"

There are hundreds of available examples of it processing large numbers of files, and making correct changes across them. There are benchmarks with open datasets already linked in the thread [1]. It's trivial to find examples of it making much more complex changes than "one liners to parse or split strings".

[1] https://huggingface.co/datasets/princeton-nlp/SWE-bench

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#350

Post by layer8 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #130
eru wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's a good heuristic? People love playing Tetris or solving crossword puzzles, and machines are much better at them than us.

People keep playing trivial or repetitive games because they enjoy it. People keep writing trivial or repetitive code because they have to .

…or maybe because they actually enjoy it the same as the games?
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