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How I write code using Cursor

arguingwithalgorithms.com

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Re: How I write code using Cursor

#361

Post by phist_mcgee »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #334
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…

Good take. It really makes you realize that as much as engineers like to pretend they're purely rational and analytical, we're just as emotional as everyone else.

This website would make you believe that all your peers exhibit Spock levels of rationality, when really it's a combination of hubris and a desire to be right on the internet

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#362

Post by phist_mcgee »

kristopolous wrote: post #239
Hrun0 wrote: post #186

I have tried both cursor and cline (formerly continue dev), and I don't seem to see the incredible performance boost using cursor like a lot of people say

I think some people are writing dumb code for a living

And let me guess, you aren't?

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#363

Post by skydhash »

dartos wrote: post #26
benreesman wrote: post #24

I’m doing an experiment in this in real time: I’ve got a bunch of top-flight junior folks, all former Jane and Google and Galois and shit, but all like 24. I’ve also been logging every interaction with an LLM and the exit status of the build on every mtime of every language mode file and all the metadata: I can easily plot when I lean on the thing and when I came out ahead, I can tag diffs that broke CI. I’m measurin…

> LLMs seem like magic unless you remember when search worked. Yikes. I didn’t even think about this, but it’s true. I’m looking for the kinds of answers that Google used to surface from stack overflow

Nowadays, I just read manuals, docs and books. I mostly use search as a quick online TOC or for that specific errors I’m in no mood to debug.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#365

Post by skydhash »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #224
namaria wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find revising correctly looking but potentially wrong code easier than just writing correct code?

Obviously, yes. For the exact same reason it's true for math homework, too! Most code most people write is trivial in terms of semantics/algorithms. The hard bit is navigating the space of possible solutions: remembering all the APIs you need at the moment - right bits of the standard library, right bits of your codebase, right bits of third-party dependencies - and holding pieces you need in your head while you asse…

When I’m writing code, I often switch between an high-level mental description and the code itself. It’s not a one way interaction. The more I code, the more refined my mental solution becomes until they merge together. I don’t need to hold everything in my memory (which is why there are many browser tabs opened). The invariant is that I can hand over my work any time and describe the rest of my solution. And the other advantage is the growing expertise in the tech.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#366

Post by mewpmewp2 »

valenterry wrote: post #246
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is not the boilerplate of the programming language necessarily, but it is more to do with boilerplate of common business logic. E.g. even say form validation, I have done it countless of times and I can't be bothered to write out rules for each field again, but AI can easily generate me Zod schema with reasonable validation based on the database model or schema. It probably does better validation rules tha…

There is nothing that stops a good PL from doing the same. In fact, that is why languages like F# support a concept called "type provider".

I'm talking about web/app UI validation, are we talking about the same thing?

Does F# provide ability to display validation errors with good UX to users using your app? How does it know what user friendly error messages look like?

Okay very simple example prompt that will generate 100+ lines of code.

"Give CRUD example using shadcn, react-hook-form, zod, trpc to create an example of a TODO app"

Which programming language would be able to replace the UI at this level of quality and how the UI looks?

Now this is very basic example, and it's a "todo app" without existing project, but I find it can give me a lot various different 100+ lines of boilerplate, from charts to sql explorers, to much else.

Also most web app developers and especially juniors usually have terrible error, loading, validation handling, and SOTA seems far superior to that, handling those cases everytime with ease and most intuitive error messages.

It will patiently always do "isLoading", checks for error, etc.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#367

Post by friggeri »

namaria wrote: post #88
friggeri wrote: post #17

I recently started using Cursor for all my typescript/react personal projects and the increase in productivity has been staggering. Not only has it helped me execute way faster, similar to the OP I also find that it prevents me from getting sidetracked by premature abstraction/optimization/refactoring. I recently went from an idea for a casual word game (aka wordle) to a fully polished product in about 2h, which woul…

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

Apologies for the misunderstanding, I just caught the typo, should have read "ala wordle", not "aka wordle", the game is fully original.

Using AI enabled me to spend more time thinking about game mechanics.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#368

Post by baudpunk »

kristopolous wrote: post #344
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.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Cursor is a LLM wrapper, so if you like LLMs, I don't know how you can like LLMs but not like Cursor. It's just a chatbot inside of VS Code. Cursor just provides the LLM more context, and an easier path to implementing the LLM's suggestions.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#369

Post by insane_dreamer »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #322
insane_dreamer wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

lol so you have no idea?

Yeah. The CoPilot plugin for PyCharm is pretty good, so not sure what Cursor offers above that esp now that CoPilot can use Claude Sonnet on the backend.

Re: How I write code using Cursor

#370

Post by valenterry »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #366
valenterry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing that stops a good PL from doing the same. In fact, that is why languages like F# support a concept called "type provider".

I'm talking about web/app UI validation, are we talking about the same thing? Does F# provide ability to display validation errors with good UX to users using your app? How does it know what user friendly error messages look like? Okay very simple example prompt that will generate 100+ lines of code. "Give CRUD example using shadcn, react-hook-form, zod, trpc to create an example of a TODO app" Which programming lang…

I'm not saying that this is a solved problem today. And yeah, llms are also helpul here.

What I meant is that this can be solved by a good language. But you would have to use F# (or another language with a feature like type providers) on the frontend.

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