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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

#361

LLM anything makes me queasy. Why would any self respecting software developer use this tripe? Learn how to write good software. Become an expert in the trade. AI anything will only dig a hole for software to die in. Cheapens the product, butchers the process and absolutely decimates any hope for skill development for future junior developers. I'll just keep chugging along, with debian, python and vim, as I always ha…

I wholeheartedly agree. When the tools become actually worth using, I'll use them. Right now they suck, and they slow you down rather than speed you up. I'm hardly a world class developer and I can do far better than these things. Someone who is actually top notch will outclass them even more.

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

#362

LLM anything makes me queasy. Why would any self respecting software developer use this tripe? Learn how to write good software. Become an expert in the trade. AI anything will only dig a hole for software to die in. Cheapens the product, butchers the process and absolutely decimates any hope for skill development for future junior developers. I'll just keep chugging along, with debian, python and vim, as I always ha…

> with debian, python and vim Why are you cheapening the product, butchering the process and decimating any hope for further skill development by using these tools? Instead of python, you should be using assembly or heck, just binary. Instead of relying on an OS abstraction layer made by someone else, you should write everything from scratch on the bare metal. Don't lower yourself by using a text editor, go hex. Then…

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/378/

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

#363
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm confused when people say that LLMs take away the fun or creativity of programming. LLMs are only really good at the tedious parts.

Because the tedious parts was done long ago while learning the tech. For any platform/library/framework you've been using for a while, you have some old projects laying around that you can extract the scaffolding from. And for new $THING you're learning, you have to take the slow approach anyway to get its semantic.

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

#364
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, their docs link to the market place of ms: https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension Which is basically an article to use an extension in a way that’s basically forbidden use. If that was not bad enough the editor also told you to install certain extensions if certain file extensions were used that were also against the tos of the extension. And basically cursor can just be using the vsix marketpl…

I don't see a problem with this. If it's an extension on my machine, why do I care about the TOS?

Its different if you do it. Or if a public company is actively encouraging you.

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

#366
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get some superficial checking by the compiler and test cases, but hallucinations that pass both are still an issue.

Absolutely, but at least you have some lines of defence while with real world info you have nothing. And the most offending stuff like importing a package that doesn't exist or using a function that doesn't exist does get caught and can be auto fixed.

Such errors can be caught and auto-fixed for now, because LLMs haven't yet rotted the code that catches and auto-fixes errors. If slop makes it into your compiler etc., I wouldn't count on that being true in the future.

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

#367

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…

1) Once you get it to output something you like, do you check all the lines it changed? Is there a threshold after which you just... hope? 2) No matter what the learning curve, you're using a statistical tool that outputs in probabilities. If that's fine for your workflow/company, go for it. It's just not what a lot of developers are okay with. Of course it's a spectrum with the AI deniers in one corner and the vibe…

> 1) Once you get it to output something you like, do you check all the lines it changed? Is there a threshold after which you just... hope?

Not op but yes. It sometimes takes a lot of time but I read everything. It still faster than nothing. Also, I ask very precise changes to the AI so it doesn’t generate huge diffs anyway.

Also for new code, TDD works wonders with AI : let it write the unit tests (you still have to be mindful of what you want to implement) and ask it to implement the code that run the tests. Since you talk the probabilistic output, the tool is incredibly good at iterating over things (running and checking tests) and also, unit tests are, in themselves, a pretty perfect prompt.

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

#368

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…

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…

If i dont trust my tool, i would never use it, or use something else better

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. We'd just do the calculations by hand, which is better than running the 95%-correct calculator and then doing the calculations by hand anyway to verify its output.

Suppose you work in a field where getting calculations right is critical. Your engineers make mistakes less than .01% of the time, but they do a lot of calculations and each mistake could cost $millions or lives. Double- and triple-checking help a lot, but they're costly. Here's a machine that verifies 95% of calculations, but you'd still have to do 5% of the work. Shall I throw it away? Unreliable tools have a good…

> you'd still have to do 5% of the work

No, you still have to do 100% of the work.

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

#370

(Cursor cofounder) Apologies - something very clearly went wrong here. We’ve already begun investigating, and some very early results: * Any AI responses used for email support are now clearly labeled as such. We use AI-assisted responses as the first filter for email support. * We’ve made sure this user is completely refunded - least we can do for the trouble. For context, this user’s complaint was the result of a r…

Does your codebase use LLM ?
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