Please read the article first. This is not “AI bad” despite what the title may imply.
I do think we are in a transitional period now. Eventually all editors will have the same agentic capability. Thats why editor agnostic tools like Claude code and aider are much more exciting to me.
mattnewton · 31d ago
I read the article and was more confused. The author seemed to make a lot of assumptions about cursor without actually trying it and then used those assumptions to justify not trying it.
lubujackson · 31d ago
There is a lot of definitive "o1 is better" etc. Lots of strawmen and sweeping statements - not sure who is upvoting this beyond the "AI sucks" crowd who didn't RTFA.
tough · 31d ago
People who criticize something without knowing or having first hand experience lack common sense
varsketiz · 31d ago
I'm really curious in what problems the codebases of startups of today will have in a few years. The internet is already full of memes about working with legacy code. What will be the legacy codebases where half of the code is generated with AI tools?
Quekid5 · 31d ago
Sooooo much boilerplate and pointless generated tests is my prediction.
EDIT: Oh, and as a sibling poster mentioned: A huge number of security vulnerabilities -- except now they can be purposefully injected by just posting random subtly-wrong code on the interweb. Not that you couldn't do that before, but reach would be much more limited unless you got your 'seemingly correct' code posted on SO.
tom_m · 31d ago
I think about this a lot. Then I realize many are already bad to begin with. So they may not be much worse as it turns out. We'll have to see.
One thing is certain though - it's an amazing time for security professionals. We already have careless developers without AI, but now? Oh boy oh boy.
tough · 31d ago
and 99% of them end up in startup cementery anyways, does it matter much if those codebases stink a lil more?
tom_m · 30d ago
True, but before they end up there, they can expose PII and all sorts of nasty stuff.
It does matter.
trowawee · 31d ago
They'll be trash, but after a decade bouncing around startups, that's not exactly a problem unique to LLMs. There's probably going to be more startups with more trash than there used to be, but hey: that's job security.
jryle70 · 31d ago
Are you sure that, when it reaches that point -- half of the code being AI-generated, AI won't be as good as half of the developers?
varsketiz · 30d ago
Interesting question. Could you elaborate in the definition of "AI is as good as half of the developers"?
layer8 · 31d ago
Are you sure that it will?
ko_pivot · 31d ago
> In fact, Cursor’s code completion isn’t much better than GitHub Copilot’s. They both use the same underlying models
Not sure that this is true. cursor agent mode is different from cursor code completion and cursor code completion is a legitimately novel model I believe.
alook · 31d ago
They definitely do train their own models, the founders have described this in several interviews.
I was surprised to learn this, but they made some interesting choices (like using sparse mixture-of-experts models for their tab completion model, to get high throughput/low latency).
Originally i think they used frontier models for their chat feature, but I believe theyve recently replaced that with something custom for their agent feature.
tom_m · 31d ago
You can have Copilot use Claude now but I'm not sure it's the default. I found the latest Gemini Pro 2.5 to be much better than Claude Sonnet anyway...but yes, these are all more or less the same at this point.
One thing people don't realize is there's also randomness in the answers. Also, some of the editors allow you to tweak temperature and others do not. This is why I found Roo Code extension to be better.
tough · 31d ago
According to this article, Cursor's tab completion is SOTA, and was built by a genius that also created some other important foundational libs on AI and worked briefly at OpenAI
Low quality clickbait article. “I like my editor because I’m used to it” ok man, do you want an award? The claims about the limitations of vscode and cursor’s code navigation abilities aren’t even accurate. The author just doesn’t know how to use them. There’s a reason it’s popular, and it’s not “everyone is dumber and less talented than me.”
mystraline · 31d ago
People who hype IDEs usually lack technical skills.
People who hype autocomplete usually lack technical skills.
People who hype memory-safe languages usually lack technical skills.
People who hype compilers usually lack technical skills.
There was some wordplay, which is just attacking the current technology that makes ttechnology more attainable by more people. However with LLMs, there is one major worry - in that it encourages de-skilling and getting addicted to having a LLM think for us. Now, if you can run your own LLMs, youre resilient to that. But the really bad side is when the LLM companies put pricetags to use the 'think-for-you' machine. And that represents a great de-skilling and anti-critical-thought.
I'm not saying "don't use LLMs". I am saying to run them yourselves, and learn how to work with them as an interactive encyclopedia, and also not to let them have core control over intellectual thought.
yladiz · 31d ago
> However with LLMs, there is one major worry - in that it encourages de-skilling and getting addicted to having a LLM think for us. Now, if you can run your own LLMs, youre resilient to that.
Not sure what you mean. Using a local LLM or a cloud one can get you addicted in the same way?
mystraline · 31d ago
Using a local LLM opens all the guarded secrets bare.
For example, you can run multiple LLMs to understand each outputs.
You can issue system messages (commands) to do specific actions, like ignore arbitrary moralities, or to process first and second derivative results.
By running and commanding an LLM locally, you become a actual tool-user, rather than a service user at the whim of whatever the company (ChatGPT, etc) wishes.
fuzzzerd · 31d ago
Where do you do recommend someone start the journey of being a llm service user to a llm tool user?
What kind of hardware is needed to get something useful running locally?
cjoelrun · 31d ago
Useful LLM architectures for working on complex codebases seem to be out the reach of consumer hardware.
v3ss0n · 31d ago
Just try qwen3 even at 14B you can turn off internet
mattnewton · 31d ago
Cursor does actually train their own models, most importantly models that apply edits to files, and models that assemble context for the llm agents. Has the author actually used the tools they are writing about?
Cursor/windsurf/roo/kilo/zed are about smoothing over rough edges in actually getting work done with agenetic models. And somewhat surprisingly, the details matter a lot in unlocking value.
plandis · 31d ago
Any claims about functionality with coding assistants should be looked upon skeptically without including the prompts, IMO.
It could very well be that Cursor isn’t very helpful. It could also be the case that the person prompting is not providing enough context for the problem at hand.
It’s impossible to tell without the full chat history.
tom_m · 31d ago
Very true. You can easily tell from the YouTubers. When you listen to them, it's clear they don't know what they're talking about because of half the things they pronounce incorrectly or incorrectly reference something.
satanfirst · 31d ago
> pronounce incorrectly
Knowing the correct pronunciation means you watch videos or have a social group that discusses it, that doesn't mean you are necessarily competent like someone who reads primary sources.
tom_m · 30d ago
Or you worked in an office. Or remote on Zoom. Or you read (projects and articles often explain how to pronounce).
So you know... experience in the industry.
But I'm not even talking about the weird names for things either.
synt4xoverload · 31d ago
Agreed. Especially when so much jargon in software these days is made up marketing speak that has little relevance to managing electromagnetic geometry in the machine.
It’s often a very intellectually dishonest industry.
phreno · 31d ago
I look forward to your fascinating work on phrenology next.
It’s always amazing such smurt people like you always seem to forget your own statistical irrelevance.
“Oh no the sound forms don’t come out just right.” What a giant foot going to squish us? Minus the anxiety of being smiting you’re projecting some bizarre obligation to your lived experience.
Why don’t you say things in the old Latin language? Yeah that’s right we move on from written and spoken traditions, just need to properly apply physical statistics to the real engineering. The stupid babble is in a YT video is far removed from actually building a bridge or another context where the physics matters more than the Anglicanized circumlocution.
tom_m · 30d ago
It's not a big deal, it's just ONE piece of evidence the YouTuber has no experience and is just being a schill for something. You have to be aware of being marketed to. This is how it works these days. No more TV ads.
skeledrew · 31d ago
> either Claude or GPT
Just a bit miffed at the usage here, given Claude is a GPT model, but OpenAI names their models in such a way that it's strange to say "ChatGPT model" to specify that category.
hamburglar · 31d ago
I get it. I’m supposed to not take advantage of a very powerful (yet often flawed) tool because I am insecure about my technical skills cred. Gotcha.
n_ary · 31d ago
To me, it sounds like, don't use the new prototype chainsaw, while it'll take down a tree real quick and many hobbyists use it for their first time tree chopping, overtime usage heats up too much and the blade may break open and severe you hand or face, whichever is closer.
hamburglar · 29d ago
Well I’ve done quite a bit of AI coding and the worst downside is that occasionally you waste as much time as you save. Equating it to chopping your hand off is rather dramatic.
rexarex · 31d ago
Cursor with Gemini 2.5 pro has been really great.
tmpz22 · 31d ago
Big fan of Gemini 2.5 + Cursor but its far from a panacea.
After using Cursor heavily the past few weeks I agree with the authors points. The ability to work outside of Cursor/AI is paramount within small software teams because you will periodically run into things it can't do - or worse it will lead you in a direction that wastes a lot of developer time.
Cursor will get better at this over time, and the underlying model, but the executive vision of this is absolutely broken and at this point I can only laugh at the problems this generation of startups will inevitably go through when they realize their teams no longer have the expertise to solve things in more traditional manners.
nicce · 31d ago
Cursor might not have core extensions soon. The current versions are full of CVEs and Microsoft tries to block them from updating.
tom_m · 31d ago
Roo Code with Gemini 2.5 Pro has been really great and FREE. I'm super curious to see how this landscape changes. I'm still surprised Windsurf managed to be acquired for $3B too. Give it a few years and there won't be a point in paying for these editors. I don't think there is currently.
mellosouls · 31d ago
Ironically, considering the title, this seems like a junior dev/young man take.
A little too sure of itself, incautious and overly generalising.
tough · 31d ago
So the problem is the hype, not the AI
hliyan · 31d ago
I installed and played around with Cursor for all of perhaps 2 hours before giving up in disgust. The first few generations are generally quite good. After that, problems started to stack up so exponentially that I found myself rubbing my temples. You would probably have the same reaction if you could read the generated code. I decided it's better to stick to my current approach of using LLMs as an expert system, helping me figure out which functions, libraries, algorithms, data structures or patterns to use, and occasionally asking them to write a standalone function.
ninetyninenine · 31d ago
Jetbrains now has junie which brings a lot of the power of cursor to there suite of ides. It’s legit.
Asraelite · 31d ago
People Who Downplay Cursor Usually Lack the Skills to Utilize It Properly /s
> In fact, Cursor’s code completion isn’t much better than GitHub Copilot’s. They both use the same underlying models
The difference is in the tooling around the models: codebase indexing, docs, MCP servers, rules, linter error feedback, and agents that automatically incorporate all of those other things together. If you don't use all that, then the models will only reach a fraction of their potential usefulness.
I agree that Cursor is overhyped by some, but it sounds like the author hasn't given it a fair chance.
tom_m · 31d ago
Copilot indexes too. Cursor doesn't let you adjust temperature. Claude gives random results. Ask the same thing a few times and see. That's why I like Roo Code, it gives you more options.
But here's the thing. You CAN make these tools do cool things, but you're going to be fiddling around a lot to do so.
...so are they really that productive? That depends. A newer engineer or if it's a new language or framework or library to a seasoned engineer? Absolutely. It shortens the whole RTFM loop. But in some cases screwing around with these tools is slowing people down.
Use them responsibly and for educational purposes. They're handy. They can help with productivity or hurt.
Taek · 31d ago
Anecedotally, this has not been my experience at all. Several of the strongest coders I know use cursor and love it. (coders who have been top of their field since before ChatGPT was a thing)
tom_m · 31d ago
Strong coders could use anything from a vi to vs code to cursor to a potato. Ok maybe not a potato.
I do think we are in a transitional period now. Eventually all editors will have the same agentic capability. Thats why editor agnostic tools like Claude code and aider are much more exciting to me.
EDIT: Oh, and as a sibling poster mentioned: A huge number of security vulnerabilities -- except now they can be purposefully injected by just posting random subtly-wrong code on the interweb. Not that you couldn't do that before, but reach would be much more limited unless you got your 'seemingly correct' code posted on SO.
One thing is certain though - it's an amazing time for security professionals. We already have careless developers without AI, but now? Oh boy oh boy.
It does matter.
Not sure that this is true. cursor agent mode is different from cursor code completion and cursor code completion is a legitimately novel model I believe.
I was surprised to learn this, but they made some interesting choices (like using sparse mixture-of-experts models for their tab completion model, to get high throughput/low latency).
Originally i think they used frontier models for their chat feature, but I believe theyve recently replaced that with something custom for their agent feature.
One thing people don't realize is there's also randomness in the answers. Also, some of the editors allow you to tweak temperature and others do not. This is why I found Roo Code extension to be better.
https://www.coplay.dev/blog/a-brief-history-of-cursor-s-tab-...
People who hype autocomplete usually lack technical skills.
People who hype memory-safe languages usually lack technical skills.
People who hype compilers usually lack technical skills.
There was some wordplay, which is just attacking the current technology that makes ttechnology more attainable by more people. However with LLMs, there is one major worry - in that it encourages de-skilling and getting addicted to having a LLM think for us. Now, if you can run your own LLMs, youre resilient to that. But the really bad side is when the LLM companies put pricetags to use the 'think-for-you' machine. And that represents a great de-skilling and anti-critical-thought.
I'm not saying "don't use LLMs". I am saying to run them yourselves, and learn how to work with them as an interactive encyclopedia, and also not to let them have core control over intellectual thought.
Not sure what you mean. Using a local LLM or a cloud one can get you addicted in the same way?
For example, you can run multiple LLMs to understand each outputs.
You can issue system messages (commands) to do specific actions, like ignore arbitrary moralities, or to process first and second derivative results.
By running and commanding an LLM locally, you become a actual tool-user, rather than a service user at the whim of whatever the company (ChatGPT, etc) wishes.
What kind of hardware is needed to get something useful running locally?
Cursor/windsurf/roo/kilo/zed are about smoothing over rough edges in actually getting work done with agenetic models. And somewhat surprisingly, the details matter a lot in unlocking value.
It could very well be that Cursor isn’t very helpful. It could also be the case that the person prompting is not providing enough context for the problem at hand.
It’s impossible to tell without the full chat history.
Knowing the correct pronunciation means you watch videos or have a social group that discusses it, that doesn't mean you are necessarily competent like someone who reads primary sources.
So you know... experience in the industry.
But I'm not even talking about the weird names for things either.
It’s often a very intellectually dishonest industry.
It’s always amazing such smurt people like you always seem to forget your own statistical irrelevance.
“Oh no the sound forms don’t come out just right.” What a giant foot going to squish us? Minus the anxiety of being smiting you’re projecting some bizarre obligation to your lived experience.
Why don’t you say things in the old Latin language? Yeah that’s right we move on from written and spoken traditions, just need to properly apply physical statistics to the real engineering. The stupid babble is in a YT video is far removed from actually building a bridge or another context where the physics matters more than the Anglicanized circumlocution.
Just a bit miffed at the usage here, given Claude is a GPT model, but OpenAI names their models in such a way that it's strange to say "ChatGPT model" to specify that category.
After using Cursor heavily the past few weeks I agree with the authors points. The ability to work outside of Cursor/AI is paramount within small software teams because you will periodically run into things it can't do - or worse it will lead you in a direction that wastes a lot of developer time.
Cursor will get better at this over time, and the underlying model, but the executive vision of this is absolutely broken and at this point I can only laugh at the problems this generation of startups will inevitably go through when they realize their teams no longer have the expertise to solve things in more traditional manners.
A little too sure of itself, incautious and overly generalising.
> In fact, Cursor’s code completion isn’t much better than GitHub Copilot’s. They both use the same underlying models
The difference is in the tooling around the models: codebase indexing, docs, MCP servers, rules, linter error feedback, and agents that automatically incorporate all of those other things together. If you don't use all that, then the models will only reach a fraction of their potential usefulness.
I agree that Cursor is overhyped by some, but it sounds like the author hasn't given it a fair chance.
But here's the thing. You CAN make these tools do cool things, but you're going to be fiddling around a lot to do so.
...so are they really that productive? That depends. A newer engineer or if it's a new language or framework or library to a seasoned engineer? Absolutely. It shortens the whole RTFM loop. But in some cases screwing around with these tools is slowing people down.
Use them responsibly and for educational purposes. They're handy. They can help with productivity or hurt.