12 ms·

Code Smarter, Not Harder: Developing with Cursor and Claude Sonnet

58 points by jstoppa 2y ago

samier-trellis 2y ago
To be clear, the main advantages over GitHub Copilot are ability to add other files as context and being able to have multiple chats going, right?
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  GitHub Copilot already includes open files in the context.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    But not the whole repo - Cursor indexes all your files in a vector DB and then can use RAG when querying models. Perhaps the biggest benefit I get from Cursor is that I can ask it questions about the whole repo - when working with a sizable team in a large repo, this is hugely valuable.
    - hn1986 2y ago
      Is the data sent to Cursor and the underlying LLM used to train models? This is key, otherwise it's not usable for most orgs. Copilot can use entire repositories using Copilot enterprise and it's guaranteed none of the data is used for training purposes. https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilot-enterprise-is-now-generally-available/ https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilo...
      - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        It uses RAG, so your whole repo is indexed locally, but of course anything relevant is put into the context window in order to get results. So in that sense it's no different from any other LLM solution, and the models you use are pluggable. You can even provide you own Open AI/Anthropic/etc. API keys. I honestly think the "oh no, enterprises are scared about where are code goes" is overblown. I mean, companies host tons of infrastructure on AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. And heck, why would a company trust GitHub (a subsidiary of Microsoft) Enterprise's guarantees and not trust Open AI's (basically a subsidiary of Microsoft at this point) guarantees?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
brigadier132 2y ago
I've been using cursor a bit, I don't know if it's because what I'm doing is not frontend web development but the results have not been as insane as others claim. I really don't have any difficulty creating basic web layouts or forms so an AI assistant doing that for me is nice but it does not transform my work.
- DGCA 2y ago
  I haven't done anything with Cursor that I wouldn't be able to do without it so far, but for me it's made certain tasks _much_ faster.
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    The problem I have is when I ask it to do something that does not have 1 million examples on github from tutorials it will just output something completely non-functional. I find it good for things that are completely derivative. Like, "implement a function that converts this type into another type"
  - malux85 2y ago
    I have, I wrote a GPU implementation of marching cubes algorithm in GLSL that shows realtime topology viewer of electron density grids by slicing through an electron voxel grid represented as a 3D texture on the GPU. I dont know GLSL, (but I am very experienced with C/C++/Python), and I wrote this by using cursor and muddling through it, all in one afternoon. Could I have learnt GLSL and coded it myself, maybe, maybe not. We are at the point now that I was able to produce something commercially useful to my platform in a language I didn't know, in a single afternoon, GLSL is pretty similar to C, but even still, theres a certain threshold of effort and time where "could I have done it with enough time" transforms into "I couldn't have done it", and we are close to that.
    - aithrowaway1987 2y ago
      My issue with this line of argument is that people always want to compare "do it with Copilot" to "do it completely by scratch" when they should be comparing it to "do it by ignorantly copy-pasting from one of the many similar projects on GitHub then tweaking a few things." There are quite a few open-source GLSL implementations of marching squares, maybe copy-pasting would have been faster and higher-quality.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
simonw 2y ago
Something that's been amusing me about Cursor is that I feel a lot of the excitement about it isn't so much about Cursor, it's people realizing that LLMs have got REALLY good at writing code now. GPT-4 was good for the past year, but the latest models (especially Claude 3.5 Sonnet) are spectacular. Those of us who've been copying and pasting LLM-generated code back and forth from ChatGPT and Claude.ai for the past year had figured this out already, so Cursor wasn't a huge surprise for us. For a lot of people Cursor is the first time they've really appreciated how good this stuff has got - so it's getting a massive amount of buzz, much of which should really be credited to Claude 3.5 Sonnet. (Cursor have done an excellent job designing editor features on top of that model and deserve credit for that, I'm just a bit tickled at some of the excitement which basically boils down to "Huh, LLMs can write good code now".)
- GiorgioG 2y ago
  I must be living in a different universe, every single LLM I've tried are shit at the details/nuances of writing code.
  - swah 2y ago
    80% of folks are doing web stuff, as soon as you deviate from that the quality must go from 9/10 to 3/10 or whatever Also have you tried shorter blocks ? "Write a function like this" instead of "write the app"
  - sarreph 2y ago
    Claude has no trouble with SQL queries, writing tests, utility functions, component sketches (React). But as soon as I start giving it reasonably complex stuff like interdependent generics (TypeScript) or intricate custom logic implementation on top of well-known frameworks, it quite often goes around in circles or outputs code with incorrect syntax. You know, the stuff that I would actually feel as though I was receiving intellectual help with. Current LLMs are _great_ at doing chores. They are not so great at producing cohesive, professional-grade code.
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
stefan_ 2y ago
My first experience with Cursor: starting it from WSL doesn't work, went down a number of GitHub rabbit holes to fix that one. Then on every update it breaks the original "code" shortcut because it has it's path with both "code" and "cursor" launchers in PATH; it ostensibly gives you the choice to register either or both, but I fail to see how that can work with this setup. It's actually a nice tool but I'm getting a "you should be a unicorn to fork ~Chrome~ VS Code" vibe.
- nimchimpsky 2y ago
  [dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
_pdp_ 2y ago
I’ve been using GitHub Copilot as my daily driver. It is now as indispensable as the Vim extension for VSCode. It doesn't write much new code for me and, frankly, it fails miserably at most tasks. However, it does a phenomenal job with auto-completion. So, while I still feel like I am in the driver's seat, it does help me achieve tremendously more by simply extending what I have already started. But that should be no surprise. After all, LLMs simply complete the next token in a long sequence of text based on some probability outcome. A lot of the code is a sequence of patterns. So the LLM should be able to do well. I feel that true coding agents are perhaps around the corner, but it seems to me that we are a couple of innovations away before this happens. However, even with coding agents, there will be simply more people producing a lot more code (even non developers) which I believe will drive the demand for higher quality code or at least code that can be understood and proved by other humans. Thus, coding agents are just force-multipliers. Great developers will become greater. I wrote something about this here if you are interested: go.cbk.ai/divide. My $0.02.
- DataDive 2y ago
  I read you post, I am not sure I agree with: > transforming a tool of empowerment into an amplifier of existing disparities. Which disparity are we talking about? That of non-coders vs coders? It used to be that someone who did not know how to code had zero chance of writing any program that runs. Enabling these people to write code is a massive empowerment unlike any we have seen before. Hundreds of millions of people who had no chance of writing working code before will be able to do so if they wish. That's a lot of people reaching for lots of ideas. I doubt that genius and insanely productive programmer, would be able to outcompete all these competitors that previously did not exist. I don't think we fully comprehend what this will mean in the future - but I doubt it amplifies disparity.
  - nicce 2y ago
    > Enabling these people to write code is a massive empowerment unlike any we have seen before. Hundreds of millions of people who had no chance of writing working code before will be able to do so if they wish. They still are not able to code. They don’t understand a thing from the output. They cannot see right from wrong, or correct anything by themselves. Maybe at some occasions that kind of coding is useful, but not in professional setting. It can be useful in learning, but so are all old school methods. You get the most from LLMs when you are very good programmer - that is the OPs point.
zb3 2y ago
So this cursor is a fork and not an extension? Could anyone tell me why? What was not possible to achieve when implementing these features as an extension?
- causal 2y ago
  Taking an open source project and making it closed source no less. Poor taste IMO
- re-thc 2y ago
  > What was not possible to achieve when implementing these features as an extension? You cannot extend everything. At least at the time when Cursor started a lot of what Copilot relied on was behind beta and gated APIs / functions. It's opened up a little more now but possibly VS Code still doesn't expose everything required.
djohnston 2y ago
Damn. I was so excited to try Cursor and when I set it up all my plug-ins got screwed up and go to def no longer worked. I guess I’ll try again this weekend. I really want to code with voice to text via LLM. Why am I typing any code with my hands these days?
perardi 2y ago
I think I’m fully on board the Cursor hype train. Mind you, I am coming on board from a very particular station: I am a UX designer and developer, and bouncing between Figma and our HTML/CSS/Templ template stack back and forth all day. So I am writing markup more so than code. And after a few days of using Cursor, I’m very into it. Partly because the default color scheme and layout just feels better than any theme I’ve used in VSCode. But more so, I really like their approach to the actual UI design of the autocompletes and access to AI features. They’re making a lot of smart choices that make it easier to understand what the autocomplete is actually completing, and exposing contextual keyboard shortcuts to access more features. It also seems to be better at picking up my UI patterns than VSCode. Maybe. I need to get some more time with it, but it really seems to pick up the typographic and spacing rhythms and patterns I’m building.
cloudking 2y ago
UX is what sets Cursor apart, all the pieces it's built on already existed, they pulled them together in a coherent way that makes coding with LLMs easier.
x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
I hate VSCode so much, that having to use a form of it is a non-starter for me.
jeffhwang 2y ago
I generally prefer using vim (and have started using neovim recently). Does anyone know when/if Cursor will provide official support to plug-ins that allow me to us its functionality in neovim? I've tried VS Code a number of times, but even with vim-bindings, it doesn't feel as nice as pure vim. I'm aware of open source alternatives like Avante.nvim [1]. I mean official support from the folks at Anysphere/Cursor, Codeium, Poolside, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353835
- bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
  Curious whether you've tried the VSCode Neovim extension. It is “real vim” in that it connects to a Neovim server, which means you can use your neovimrc and packages and all that. It still lives inside VSCode, so there's going to be keyboard latency and the like, but I find it really good.
trees101 2y ago
obligatory plug for aider: https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html I run aider in a terminal, and separately review and manually code in VSCode. Usint the `--no-auto-commits` switch means that I can immediately view the diffs in the nice VSCode diff view and it's very easy to do hybrid manual and AI coding. There are plenty of handy settings (see /help), for example you can /ask questions about your code. `aider --no-auto-commits --cache-prompts --no-stream --cache-keepalive-pings 6 --no-suggest-shell-commands`
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

58 points by jstoppa 2y ago

To be clear, the main advantages over GitHub Copilot are ability to add other files as context and being able to have multiple chats going, right?

OutOfHere 2y ago
GitHub Copilot already includes open files in the context.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  But not the whole repo - Cursor indexes all your files in a vector DB and then can use RAG when querying models. Perhaps the biggest benefit I get from Cursor is that I can ask it questions about the whole repo - when working with a sizable team in a large repo, this is hugely valuable.
  - hn1986 2y ago
    Is the data sent to Cursor and the underlying LLM used to train models? This is key, otherwise it's not usable for most orgs. Copilot can use entire repositories using Copilot enterprise and it's guaranteed none of the data is used for training purposes. https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilot-enterprise-is-now-generally-available/ https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilo...
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      It uses RAG, so your whole repo is indexed locally, but of course anything relevant is put into the context window in order to get results. So in that sense it's no different from any other LLM solution, and the models you use are pluggable. You can even provide you own Open AI/Anthropic/etc. API keys. I honestly think the "oh no, enterprises are scared about where are code goes" is overblown. I mean, companies host tons of infrastructure on AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. And heck, why would a company trust GitHub (a subsidiary of Microsoft) Enterprise's guarantees and not trust Open AI's (basically a subsidiary of Microsoft at this point) guarantees?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

brigadier132 2y ago

I've been using cursor a bit, I don't know if it's because what I'm doing is not frontend web development but the results have not been as insane as others claim. I really don't have any difficulty creating basic web layouts or forms so an AI assistant doing that for me is nice but it does not transform my work.

DGCA 2y ago
I haven't done anything with Cursor that I wouldn't be able to do without it so far, but for me it's made certain tasks _much_ faster.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  The problem I have is when I ask it to do something that does not have 1 million examples on github from tutorials it will just output something completely non-functional. I find it good for things that are completely derivative. Like, "implement a function that converts this type into another type"
- malux85 2y ago
  I have, I wrote a GPU implementation of marching cubes algorithm in GLSL that shows realtime topology viewer of electron density grids by slicing through an electron voxel grid represented as a 3D texture on the GPU. I dont know GLSL, (but I am very experienced with C/C++/Python), and I wrote this by using cursor and muddling through it, all in one afternoon. Could I have learnt GLSL and coded it myself, maybe, maybe not. We are at the point now that I was able to produce something commercially useful to my platform in a language I didn't know, in a single afternoon, GLSL is pretty similar to C, but even still, theres a certain threshold of effort and time where "could I have done it with enough time" transforms into "I couldn't have done it", and we are close to that.
  - aithrowaway1987 2y ago
    My issue with this line of argument is that people always want to compare "do it with Copilot" to "do it completely by scratch" when they should be comparing it to "do it by ignorantly copy-pasting from one of the many similar projects on GitHub then tweaking a few things." There are quite a few open-source GLSL implementations of marching squares, maybe copy-pasting would have been faster and higher-quality.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

simonw 2y ago

Something that's been amusing me about Cursor is that I feel a lot of the excitement about it isn't so much about Cursor, it's people realizing that LLMs have got REALLY good at writing code now. GPT-4 was good for the past year, but the latest models (especially Claude 3.5 Sonnet) are spectacular. Those of us who've been copying and pasting LLM-generated code back and forth from ChatGPT and Claude.ai for the past year had figured this out already, so Cursor wasn't a huge surprise for us. For a lot of people Cursor is the first time they've really appreciated how good this stuff has got - so it's getting a massive amount of buzz, much of which should really be credited to Claude 3.5 Sonnet. (Cursor have done an excellent job designing editor features on top of that model and deserve credit for that, I'm just a bit tickled at some of the excitement which basically boils down to "Huh, LLMs can write good code now".)

GiorgioG 2y ago
I must be living in a different universe, every single LLM I've tried are shit at the details/nuances of writing code.
- swah 2y ago
  80% of folks are doing web stuff, as soon as you deviate from that the quality must go from 9/10 to 3/10 or whatever Also have you tried shorter blocks ? "Write a function like this" instead of "write the app"
- sarreph 2y ago
  Claude has no trouble with SQL queries, writing tests, utility functions, component sketches (React). But as soon as I start giving it reasonably complex stuff like interdependent generics (TypeScript) or intricate custom logic implementation on top of well-known frameworks, it quite often goes around in circles or outputs code with incorrect syntax. You know, the stuff that I would actually feel as though I was receiving intellectual help with. Current LLMs are _great_ at doing chores. They are not so great at producing cohesive, professional-grade code.
- steve_adams_86 2y ago

stefan_ 2y ago

My first experience with Cursor: starting it from WSL doesn't work, went down a number of GitHub rabbit holes to fix that one. Then on every update it breaks the original "code" shortcut because it has it's path with both "code" and "cursor" launchers in PATH; it ostensibly gives you the choice to register either or both, but I fail to see how that can work with this setup. It's actually a nice tool but I'm getting a "you should be a unicorn to fork ~Chrome~ VS Code" vibe.

nimchimpsky 2y ago
[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

_pdp_ 2y ago

I’ve been using GitHub Copilot as my daily driver. It is now as indispensable as the Vim extension for VSCode. It doesn't write much new code for me and, frankly, it fails miserably at most tasks. However, it does a phenomenal job with auto-completion. So, while I still feel like I am in the driver's seat, it does help me achieve tremendously more by simply extending what I have already started. But that should be no surprise. After all, LLMs simply complete the next token in a long sequence of text based on some probability outcome. A lot of the code is a sequence of patterns. So the LLM should be able to do well. I feel that true coding agents are perhaps around the corner, but it seems to me that we are a couple of innovations away before this happens. However, even with coding agents, there will be simply more people producing a lot more code (even non developers) which I believe will drive the demand for higher quality code or at least code that can be understood and proved by other humans. Thus, coding agents are just force-multipliers. Great developers will become greater. I wrote something about this here if you are interested: go.cbk.ai/divide. My $0.02.

DataDive 2y ago
I read you post, I am not sure I agree with: > transforming a tool of empowerment into an amplifier of existing disparities. Which disparity are we talking about? That of non-coders vs coders? It used to be that someone who did not know how to code had zero chance of writing any program that runs. Enabling these people to write code is a massive empowerment unlike any we have seen before. Hundreds of millions of people who had no chance of writing working code before will be able to do so if they wish. That's a lot of people reaching for lots of ideas. I doubt that genius and insanely productive programmer, would be able to outcompete all these competitors that previously did not exist. I don't think we fully comprehend what this will mean in the future - but I doubt it amplifies disparity.
- nicce 2y ago
  > Enabling these people to write code is a massive empowerment unlike any we have seen before. Hundreds of millions of people who had no chance of writing working code before will be able to do so if they wish. They still are not able to code. They don’t understand a thing from the output. They cannot see right from wrong, or correct anything by themselves. Maybe at some occasions that kind of coding is useful, but not in professional setting. It can be useful in learning, but so are all old school methods. You get the most from LLMs when you are very good programmer - that is the OPs point.

zb3 2y ago

So this cursor is a fork and not an extension? Could anyone tell me why? What was not possible to achieve when implementing these features as an extension?

causal 2y ago
Taking an open source project and making it closed source no less. Poor taste IMO
re-thc 2y ago
> What was not possible to achieve when implementing these features as an extension? You cannot extend everything. At least at the time when Cursor started a lot of what Copilot relied on was behind beta and gated APIs / functions. It's opened up a little more now but possibly VS Code still doesn't expose everything required.

djohnston 2y ago

Damn. I was so excited to try Cursor and when I set it up all my plug-ins got screwed up and go to def no longer worked. I guess I’ll try again this weekend. I really want to code with voice to text via LLM. Why am I typing any code with my hands these days?

perardi 2y ago

I think I’m fully on board the Cursor hype train. Mind you, I am coming on board from a very particular station: I am a UX designer and developer, and bouncing between Figma and our HTML/CSS/Templ template stack back and forth all day. So I am writing markup more so than code. And after a few days of using Cursor, I’m very into it. Partly because the default color scheme and layout just feels better than any theme I’ve used in VSCode. But more so, I really like their approach to the actual UI design of the autocompletes and access to AI features. They’re making a lot of smart choices that make it easier to understand what the autocomplete is actually completing, and exposing contextual keyboard shortcuts to access more features. It also seems to be better at picking up my UI patterns than VSCode. Maybe. I need to get some more time with it, but it really seems to pick up the typographic and spacing rhythms and patterns I’m building.

cloudking 2y ago

UX is what sets Cursor apart, all the pieces it's built on already existed, they pulled them together in a coherent way that makes coding with LLMs easier.

x3n0ph3n3 2y ago

I hate VSCode so much, that having to use a form of it is a non-starter for me.

jeffhwang 2y ago

I generally prefer using vim (and have started using neovim recently). Does anyone know when/if Cursor will provide official support to plug-ins that allow me to us its functionality in neovim? I've tried VS Code a number of times, but even with vim-bindings, it doesn't feel as nice as pure vim. I'm aware of open source alternatives like Avante.nvim [1]. I mean official support from the folks at Anysphere/Cursor, Codeium, Poolside, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353835

bobbylarrybobby 2y ago
Curious whether you've tried the VSCode Neovim extension. It is “real vim” in that it connects to a Neovim server, which means you can use your neovimrc and packages and all that. It still lives inside VSCode, so there's going to be keyboard latency and the like, but I find it really good.

trees101 2y ago

obligatory plug for aider: https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html I run aider in a terminal, and separately review and manually code in VSCode. Usint the `--no-auto-commits` switch means that I can immediately view the diffs in the nice VSCode diff view and it's very easy to do hybrid manual and AI coding. There are plenty of handy settings (see /help), for example you can /ask questions about your code. `aider --no-auto-commits --cache-prompts --no-stream --cache-keepalive-pings 6 --no-suggest-shell-commands`

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]