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Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

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Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#71
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How "easy" is it is to scaffold a personal vscode plugin?

Not that trivial to hand code, I just had this feature (copying) in another larger plugin I wrote. However, I think it can be "vibe coded"these days.

Thanks, overall I should make something like that, but generally optimistic that vscode will soon provide all that's necessary, so laziness prevails.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#72
post #69

I thought Cursor was pointless until trying out Google's latest coding GPT, which blows everything else out of the water. I may switch from VSCode to cursor for the next few months just because of that.

Why not just switch Copilot to use Google Gemini 2.5 Pro as the model? With every update to the Copilot extension, I see less and less of a need to switch away from VS Code to some “dedicated AI editor du jour ”. Maybe I’m missing something, or maybe people aren’t keeping up with Copilot’s capabilities? ⁽¹⁾ https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/reference/copilot... ⁽²⁾ https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/…

Good point. I suppose I'd missed that they added it. Trying it now and it's fantastic.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#73
post #24

I thought Cursor was pointless until trying out Google's latest coding GPT, which blows everything else out of the water. I may switch from VSCode to cursor for the next few months just because of that.

Do you mean Google Code Assist plugin for IDEs or something else?

I meant the GPT Gemini 2.5 pro exp. but I see now it's available in VS code too. Guess I missed it because I was always using Claude

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#74
I use cline + Anthropic and Google models with a custom .clinerules for frontend react + typescript. I manually tag relevant files into context

- Gemini 2.5 pro tries to fix and refactor my entire codebase unless I aggressively constrain it, which is too much work. I've written it off as unusable for coding, but can be fine for educational purposes

- For AI IDE coding, I narrow down the scope of what I ask so Gemini 2.0 Flash or Haiku can handle it. I've haven't seen better results switching to paid models.

- For generating large swaths of code, I recently went back to copy/pasting into Claude Projects, with my github project hooked up and relevant files added to context. For a moderately complex component, it usually takes 5-15 generated versions to work, though I end up adjusting my specs a bit in the process. This is still faster than using the agent. Claude Code might get similar results, but I already pay for Anthropic so haven't tried it out.

- If I'm picking up a new library, concept, or pattern, I usually chat with Claude to level up my knowledge. The "Plan" mode in cline focuses more on task execution than skill development.

I'm open to suggestions on what to try next!

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#75

I built a tool that helps with copy pasting code into chat UI called 16x Prompt. https://prompt.16x.engineer/ It is used by quite a lot of people. So the problem is definitely there. The app supports API integration as well. From usage stats, still there are more people using the copy pasting flow instead of API flow. I suspect it is because people are already have a subscription so they can basically use that for fr…

I use 16x for the copy-paste workflow. Really useful tool. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#76
I used the Jetbrains IntelliJ AI briefly. It's certainly convenient to just click a button and have it fill in documentation or write appropriate tests for the context of the file or like you're on.

I would definitely use it over copy pasting for the convenience. However, I only code as a hobby these days, so probably won't pay for it unless I really get stuck into a larger bit of work - but would definitely then.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#77
My experience with Cursor - it's a great tool to work with websites and may be simpe yet vast app code updates. You have quite a lot of control and diffs are helpful.

For engineering though, it's probably better to spend more money on Claude Code. He will be your super-knowledgeable junior assistant, which will result in much higher efficiency. AIDER is also an option.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#78

I don't use IDEs to begin with. I use a text editor, since I am a UNIX man. So, I don't even have a reason to look at the "AI" flavor of an IDE. The closest thing to an AI IDE that I have tried out were tools like AIDER and Jack's "goose" agent. Neither of those specialized tools has been satisfactory. They all performed worse than just the LLM IMO. I am sticking to crafting my own context that I supply to the LLM. T…

I'm mostly on the same page, but jumping into a new project with a not-so-familiar language has been made much less painful with Cursor. Regular anthropic chats spew nonsense most of the time and are disappointing, but Cursor really seems to be useful.

Of course it also gets stuff wrong and everything needs to be properly validated, but it's a nice tool to try out.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#79
Cursor does a lot more of the work. It not only tells you what to write, it jumps across different files and makes the edits. It indexes your code and has a good idea how it goes together and where your code is.

They acquired Supermaven last year, which was also one of the fastest code completion with the biggest context window even versus the new models. So they are able to do a lot of quality work locally before involving the major LLMs.

A year's subscription falls at about $16/month. I would say Cursor is the first real use of AI and it gives so much unfair advantage to those who use it. You get quality + speed/stability + low price, there's just little reason to paste anything into websites anymore, and no reason to go back to Copilot.

Re: Ask HN: How much better are AI IDEs vs. copy pasting into chat apps?

#80

I'm a staff software engineer doing a mix of front-end and back-end with emphasis on front-end. I use both Cursor on Claude 3.7 and ChatGPT on 4o/o3. Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o, but it's a good workhorse. I let Cursor handle the basics - basically acting as a glorified multi-file autocomplete. I think through common problems with 4o, tough problems with o3, I copy all of Svelte's docs into 4o ( https:…

> Cursor seems kind of "dumb" compared to 4o What do you mean by that? You can use 4o model in Cursor?

Cursor lists a large number of models out of the box, and you can select which one you want it to use. https://docs.cursor.com/settings/models
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