4 ms·

Wow, looks great. How is this different from VS Code‘s copilot?

vipshek 2y ago
I've completely switched over to Cursor from Copilot. Main benefits: 1. You can configure which LLMs you want to use, whereas Copilot just supports OpenAI models. I just use Claude 3.5 for everything. 2. Chatting with the LLM can produce file edits that you can directly apply to your files. Cursor's experimental "Composer" UI lets you prompt to make changes to multiple files, and then you can apply all the changes with one click. This is way more powerful than just tab-complete or a chat interface. For example, I can prompt something like "Factor out the selected code into a new file" and it does everything properly. 3. Cursor lets you tune what's in LLM context much more precisely. You can @-mention specific files or folders, attach images, etc. Note I have no affiliation whatsoever with Cursor, I've just really enjoyed using it. If you're interested, I wrote a blog post about my switch to Cursor here: https://www.vipshek.com/blog/cursor https://www.vipshek.com/blog/cursor. My specific setup tips are at the bottom of that post.
viraptor 2y ago
It's not even the same class. Copilot does autocomplete essentially. Cursor does that but with the scope of a file/project. That means after you change one thing it will offer to skip to another part of the file and do the other part of the change there. Refractors often end up being a single change then (tab), (tab), (tab), ... And it's correct a shocking amount of time. The UI of proposed changes is also better. I'd recommend just trying it, because it's hard to summarise how much it's not copilot.
- PoignardAzur 2y ago
  The "tab to next change" feature is amazing and I would love it if it worked reliably. As it is though, I suspect whatever model Cursor Tab is using under the hood has a fairly small context window, so the range of that "tab to move" feature ends up being pretty limited. Overall my takeaway after months of using Cursor is that it has some really promising features but their LLM engine is too underpowered to deliver. Hopefully that will change over the next few years. The potential is definitely there.
mbeex 2y ago
There are several others (free and certainly on par with cursor). Personally I'm using https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html (not a vscode plugin, but with other advantages even when using this editor) https://docs.continue.dev/getting-started/overview https://docs.continue.dev/getting-started/overview https://github.com/cline/cline https://github.com/cline/cline was pretty good too, but it had taken on too much in its latest version 2.0.0. In other words, it is too unstable at the moment (but probably worth looking at again later).

I've completely switched over to Cursor from Copilot. Main benefits: 1. You can configure which LLMs you want to use, whereas Copilot just supports OpenAI models. I just use Claude 3.5 for everything. 2. Chatting with the LLM can produce file edits that you can directly apply to your files. Cursor's experimental "Composer" UI lets you prompt to make changes to multiple files, and then you can apply all the changes with one click. This is way more powerful than just tab-complete or a chat interface. For example, I can prompt something like "Factor out the selected code into a new file" and it does everything properly. 3. Cursor lets you tune what's in LLM context much more precisely. You can @-mention specific files or folders, attach images, etc. Note I have no affiliation whatsoever with Cursor, I've just really enjoyed using it. If you're interested, I wrote a blog post about my switch to Cursor here: https://www.vipshek.com/blog/cursor https://www.vipshek.com/blog/cursor. My specific setup tips are at the bottom of that post.

viraptor 2y ago

It's not even the same class. Copilot does autocomplete essentially. Cursor does that but with the scope of a file/project. That means after you change one thing it will offer to skip to another part of the file and do the other part of the change there. Refractors often end up being a single change then (tab), (tab), (tab), ... And it's correct a shocking amount of time. The UI of proposed changes is also better. I'd recommend just trying it, because it's hard to summarise how much it's not copilot.

PoignardAzur 2y ago
The "tab to next change" feature is amazing and I would love it if it worked reliably. As it is though, I suspect whatever model Cursor Tab is using under the hood has a fairly small context window, so the range of that "tab to move" feature ends up being pretty limited. Overall my takeaway after months of using Cursor is that it has some really promising features but their LLM engine is too underpowered to deliver. Hopefully that will change over the next few years. The potential is definitely there.

mbeex 2y ago

There are several others (free and certainly on par with cursor). Personally I'm using https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage.html (not a vscode plugin, but with other advantages even when using this editor) https://docs.continue.dev/getting-started/overview https://docs.continue.dev/getting-started/overview https://github.com/cline/cline https://github.com/cline/cline was pretty good too, but it had taken on too much in its latest version 2.0.0. In other words, it is too unstable at the moment (but probably worth looking at again later).