5 ms·

I think you're downplaying how well Cursor is doing "code generation" relative to other products. Cursor can do at least the following "actions": * code gener

I think you're downplaying how well Cursor is doing "code generation" relative to other products. Cursor can do at least the following "actions": * code generation * file creation / deletion * run terminal commands * answer questions about a code base I totally agree with you on ETL (it's a huge part of our product https://www.definite.app/ https://www.definite.app/), but the actions an agent takes are just as tricky to get right. Before I give Cursor, I often doubt it's going to be able to pull it off and I constantly impressed by how deep it can go to complete a complex task.

uxhacker 2y ago
So isn’t cursor just a tool for Claude or ChatGpt to use? Another example would be a flight booking engine. So why can’t an AI just talk direct to an IDE? This is hard as the process has changed, due to the human needing to be in the middle. So Isn’t AI useless without the tools to manipulate?
ErikBjare 2y ago
Is it really that different to Claude with tools via MCP, or my own terminal-based gptme? (https://github.com/ErikBjare/gptme https://github.com/ErikBjare/gptme)
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  I thought it's basically a subset of Aider[0] bolted into a VS Code fork, and I remain confused as to why we're talking about it so much now, when we didn't about Aider before. Some kind of startup-friendly bias? I for one would prefer OSS to succeed in this space. -- [0] - https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/
  - jddj 2y ago
    Somewhat cynically, maybe because there's VC in Cursor. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/in-just-4-months-ai-coding-assistant-cursor-raised-another-100m-at-a-2-5b-valuation-led-by-thrive-sources-say/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/in-just-4-months-ai-coding...
  - SmellTheGlove 2y ago
    Aider is the single best tool I’ve tried. And I’d never heard of it until like 2 weeks ago when someone mentioned it here. I love aider.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      The irony is, it's sort of a household name on HN for over a year now, being way ahead of what was available commercially on the market - and yet, it seems most people here haven't heard of it. (The author used to post a lot of insightful comments here about LLMs and other generative models, too.)
      - ErikBjare 2y ago
        The same is true of my own gptme, which has been pretty much at parity with Aider along the way. Paul (Aider author) is a lot better at writing useful stuff than me though! (like the amazing blog posts)
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Thanks for mentioning this, because I somehow managed to miss gptme all that time! I'll check it out now.
      - throwaway314155 2y ago
        > it's sort of a household name on HN for over a year now, being way ahead of what was available commercially on the market - and yet, it seems most people here haven't heard of it. Can you clarify what you mean? If "most people here haven't heard of it" then it's probably not a household name.
  - tailspin2019 2y ago
    Thanks for spreading the word. I hadn’t heard of Aider before and I’m now going to give it a try today.
  - Xmd5a 2y ago
    I tried aider and had problems having it update code in existing files. Aider uses a search and replace pattern to update existing code. So you often end up with >>>SEARCH } >>>REPLACE }, {'more': 'data'} Of course aider will try to apply this kind of patch even when the search pattern matches several occurrences in the target file. Looking at the Github issues, this is a problem that was brought up several times and was never fixed because apparently it's not even problematic. I moved to cursor, which doesn't have this problem, and never looked back.
    - ErikBjare 2y ago
      For what it's worth, gptme will refuse non-unique matches (and ask the LLM to try again). I thought Aider did too (easy win after all), but apparently not.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        For me this happened at the end of functions in vanilla JS; I used to work around it by putting "// end of foo()" comments after the closing brace. However, Aider has multiple modes for LLM editing, including diff, udiff, and whole file; you can switch between those when needed.
  - ErikBjare 2y ago
    This is why I was asking. My own gptme is also just slightly different from Aider and has been around roughly as long.
stickfigure 2y ago
This really puzzles me. I tried Cursor and was completely underwhelmed. The answers it gave (about a 1.5M loc messy Spring codebase) were surface-level and unhelpful to anyone but a Java novice. I get vastly better work out of my intern. To add insult to injury, the IntelliJ plugin threw spurious errors. I ended up uninstalling it and marking my calendar to try again in 6 months. Yet some people say Cursor is great. Is it something about my project? I can't imagine how it deals with a codebase that is many millions of tokens. Or is it something about me? I'm asking hard questions because I don't need to ask the easy ones. What are people who think Cursor is great doing differently?
- mritchie712 2y ago
  This is a great question and easy to answer with the context you provided. I don't think your poor experience is because of you, it's because of your codebase. Cursor works worse (in my experience) on larger codebases and seems particularly good at JS (e.g. React, node, etc.). Cursor excels at things like small NextJS apps. It will easily work across multiple files and complete tasks that would take me ~30 minutes in 30 seconds. Trying again in 6 months is a good move. As models get larger context windows and Cursor improves (e.g. better RAG) you should have a better experience.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    Cursor's problem isn't bigger context, it's better context. I've been using it recently with @nanostores/react and @nanostores/router. It constantly wants to use router methods from react-router and not nanostores so I am constantly correcting it. This is despite using the rules for AI config (https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules-for-ai https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules-for-ai). It continually makes the same mistakes and requires the same correction likely because of the dominance of react-router in the model's training. That tells me that the prompt it's using isn't smart enough to know "use @nanostores/router because I didn't find react-router". I think for Cursor to really nail it, the base prompt needs to have more context that it derived from the codebase. It should know that because I'm referencing @nanostores/router, to include an instruction to always use @nanostores/router.
whimsicalism 2y ago
I’m very “bullish” on AI in general but find cursor incredibly underwhelming because there is little value add compared to basically any other AI coding tool that goes beyond autocomplete. Cursor emphatically does not understand large codebases and smaller (few file codebases) can just be pasted into a chat context in the worst case.

uxhacker 2y ago

So isn’t cursor just a tool for Claude or ChatGpt to use? Another example would be a flight booking engine. So why can’t an AI just talk direct to an IDE? This is hard as the process has changed, due to the human needing to be in the middle. So Isn’t AI useless without the tools to manipulate?

ErikBjare 2y ago

Is it really that different to Claude with tools via MCP, or my own terminal-based gptme? (https://github.com/ErikBjare/gptme https://github.com/ErikBjare/gptme)

TeMPOraL 2y ago
I thought it's basically a subset of Aider[0] bolted into a VS Code fork, and I remain confused as to why we're talking about it so much now, when we didn't about Aider before. Some kind of startup-friendly bias? I for one would prefer OSS to succeed in this space. -- [0] - https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/
- jddj 2y ago
  Somewhat cynically, maybe because there's VC in Cursor. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/in-just-4-months-ai-coding-assistant-cursor-raised-another-100m-at-a-2-5b-valuation-led-by-thrive-sources-say/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/in-just-4-months-ai-coding...
- SmellTheGlove 2y ago
  Aider is the single best tool I’ve tried. And I’d never heard of it until like 2 weeks ago when someone mentioned it here. I love aider.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    The irony is, it's sort of a household name on HN for over a year now, being way ahead of what was available commercially on the market - and yet, it seems most people here haven't heard of it. (The author used to post a lot of insightful comments here about LLMs and other generative models, too.)
    - ErikBjare 2y ago
      The same is true of my own gptme, which has been pretty much at parity with Aider along the way. Paul (Aider author) is a lot better at writing useful stuff than me though! (like the amazing blog posts)
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Thanks for mentioning this, because I somehow managed to miss gptme all that time! I'll check it out now.
    - throwaway314155 2y ago
      > it's sort of a household name on HN for over a year now, being way ahead of what was available commercially on the market - and yet, it seems most people here haven't heard of it. Can you clarify what you mean? If "most people here haven't heard of it" then it's probably not a household name.
- tailspin2019 2y ago
  Thanks for spreading the word. I hadn’t heard of Aider before and I’m now going to give it a try today.
- Xmd5a 2y ago
  I tried aider and had problems having it update code in existing files. Aider uses a search and replace pattern to update existing code. So you often end up with >>>SEARCH } >>>REPLACE }, {'more': 'data'} Of course aider will try to apply this kind of patch even when the search pattern matches several occurrences in the target file. Looking at the Github issues, this is a problem that was brought up several times and was never fixed because apparently it's not even problematic. I moved to cursor, which doesn't have this problem, and never looked back.
  - ErikBjare 2y ago
    For what it's worth, gptme will refuse non-unique matches (and ask the LLM to try again). I thought Aider did too (easy win after all), but apparently not.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      For me this happened at the end of functions in vanilla JS; I used to work around it by putting "// end of foo()" comments after the closing brace. However, Aider has multiple modes for LLM editing, including diff, udiff, and whole file; you can switch between those when needed.
- ErikBjare 2y ago
  This is why I was asking. My own gptme is also just slightly different from Aider and has been around roughly as long.

stickfigure 2y ago

This really puzzles me. I tried Cursor and was completely underwhelmed. The answers it gave (about a 1.5M loc messy Spring codebase) were surface-level and unhelpful to anyone but a Java novice. I get vastly better work out of my intern. To add insult to injury, the IntelliJ plugin threw spurious errors. I ended up uninstalling it and marking my calendar to try again in 6 months. Yet some people say Cursor is great. Is it something about my project? I can't imagine how it deals with a codebase that is many millions of tokens. Or is it something about me? I'm asking hard questions because I don't need to ask the easy ones. What are people who think Cursor is great doing differently?

mritchie712 2y ago
This is a great question and easy to answer with the context you provided. I don't think your poor experience is because of you, it's because of your codebase. Cursor works worse (in my experience) on larger codebases and seems particularly good at JS (e.g. React, node, etc.). Cursor excels at things like small NextJS apps. It will easily work across multiple files and complete tasks that would take me ~30 minutes in 30 seconds. Trying again in 6 months is a good move. As models get larger context windows and Cursor improves (e.g. better RAG) you should have a better experience.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Cursor's problem isn't bigger context, it's better context. I've been using it recently with @nanostores/react and @nanostores/router. It constantly wants to use router methods from react-router and not nanostores so I am constantly correcting it. This is despite using the rules for AI config (https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules-for-ai https://docs.cursor.com/context/rules-for-ai). It continually makes the same mistakes and requires the same correction likely because of the dominance of react-router in the model's training. That tells me that the prompt it's using isn't smart enough to know "use @nanostores/router because I didn't find react-router". I think for Cursor to really nail it, the base prompt needs to have more context that it derived from the codebase. It should know that because I'm referencing @nanostores/router, to include an instruction to always use @nanostores/router.

whimsicalism 2y ago

I’m very “bullish” on AI in general but find cursor incredibly underwhelming because there is little value add compared to basically any other AI coding tool that goes beyond autocomplete. Cursor emphatically does not understand large codebases and smaller (few file codebases) can just be pasted into a chat context in the worst case.