Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#1

Post by skarat » Mon, May 12, 2025, 4:41 AM UTC

Things are changing so fast with these vscode forks I m barely able to keep up. Which one are you guys using currently? How does the autocomplete etc, compare between the two?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#2

Post by sharedptr » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

Personally copilot/code assist for tab autocomplete, if I need longer boilerplate I request it to the LLM. Usually VIM with LSP.

Anything that’s not boilerplate I still code it

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#3

Post by skrhee » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

Zed! I find it to be less buggy and generally more intuitive to use.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#4

Post by manojkumarsmks » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

Using cursor.. pretty good tool. Pick one and start.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#5

Post by vasachi » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

I’d just wait a bit. At current rate of progress winner will be apparent sooner rather than later.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#6

Post by snthpy » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:24 AM UTC

Cline?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#7

Post by shaunxcode » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:25 AM UTC

neither : my pen is my autocomplete

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#8

Post by outcoldman » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

I really like Zed. Have not tried any of the mentioned by op. Zed I feel like is getting somewhere that can replace Sublime Text completely (but not there yet).

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#9

Post by danpalmer » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:28 AM UTC

Zed. They've upped their game in the AI integration and so far it's the best one I've seen (external from work). Cursor and VSCode+Copilot always felt slow and janky, Zed is much less janky feels like pretty mature software, and I can just plug in my Gemini API key and use that for free/cheap instead of paying for the editor's own integration.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#10

Post by SafeDusk » Mon, May 12, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

I am betting on myself.

I built a minimal agentic framework (with editing capability) that works for a lot of my tasks with just seven tools: read, write, diff, browse, command, ask and think.

One thing I'm proud of is the ability to have it be more proactive in making changes and taking next action by just disabling the `ask` tool.

I won't say it is better than any of the VSCode forks, but it works for 70% of my tasks in an understandable manner. As for the remaining stuff, I can always use Cursor/Windsurf in a complementary manner.

It is open, have a look at https://github.com/aperoc/toolkami if it interests you.