7 ms·

They'd better get on the IntelliJ integration fast— if I'm going to switch editors in order to use an LLM coding assistant, I may as well just switch to Cursor

They'd better get on the IntelliJ integration fast— if I'm going to switch editors in order to use an LLM coding assistant, I may as well just switch to Cursor, which has a strong head start on them on the assistant and also has a much better autocomplete. I'm honestly surprised to see no mention here of them moving to replicate Cursor's autocomplete—IMO that is where Cursor's real edge lies. Anyone can wrap a chatbot in some UI that allows you to avoid pasting by hand, but Cursor's ability to guess my next move—even several lines away—makes it far and away more efficient than alternatives.

theasisa 2y ago
I tried Cursor a couple of years ago and wasn't impressed - has it improved a lot? I only use autocomplete, not the chat function and at the time found CoPilot superior.
- baq 2y ago
  It has improved but you're missing out if you aren't using the big ticket features. I tab myself to solutions, too, but if there's a react view to do, I dish out the composer and am literally 10x faster - what would previously take a day now takes an hour. If there's an interface to create out of a json blob, I paste the blob and just tell it to make an interface, then clean up the types a bit, etc.
- sturza 2y ago
  Years?
  - Gothmog69 2y ago
    Tried cursor on my amiga II and wasn't that impressed tbh
    - snvzz 2y ago
      Cursor was an AmigaBASIC compiler for AmigaOS.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I tried it last month on a medium size personal project and was blown away by the autocomplete. I'd previously staunchly refused to try it on the grounds that I'm too productive in IntelliJ, but at this point I'm most likely going to start paying for both. I don't know if I'm ready to use it as a daily driver, but there are certain kinds of tasks—especially large refactors—where its ability to rapidly suggest and accurately make the changes across a file is incredibly valuable. It somehow manages to do all of that without ever breaking my sense of flow, which is more than I can say for Copilot's suggestions. And yeah, I'm with you that autocomplete is the way to go. I think chat is a red herring that will have long-term negative effects if it's used extensively in a codebase. Autocomplete keeps you in touch with the code while still benefiting from the co-pilot, and Cursor's UX for that is far and away the best I've seen.
  - singularity2001 2y ago
    did you use intellij with copilot auto complete before that?
- nirava 2y ago
  I'd written off AI autocomplete as pointless after trying GitHub Copilot's a year ago. But Cursor's tab-autocomplete is actually really useful. It feels like it very much knows what I'm up to.
- 827a 2y ago
  Cursor is ten times better than VSCode and Copilot. Its extraordinarily good at reducing two-minute tasks to 10-seconds, and the more you use it the better you get at identifying these two-minute tasks. Example (web dev): hit cmd+k --> "this is a two column layout. make sure the columns are the same size". It just does it. To do that myself I would have had to switch to a browser, google flex box, go to that classic flexbox cheat sheet that we all know and love, tweak around with the different values of justify-content and justify-self, realize that was the wrong approach, then arrive at the correct answer of making sure each column flex-grows identically. two minute task, now 10 seconds. hit cmd+k -> "flow these columns one-after-another on smaller screens" done. thirty second task, now 10 seconds. hit cmd+k -> "enable or disable the rendering of this component via props" done. new prop added, prop is flowed through to a `display` css property, easy. The autocomplete is pretty good, but can get annoying. You definitely have to get used to it. However, the cmd+k quick fix thing is insane. Its literally made me at least 200% more productive, and I think that might grow to 300% as I learn to use it and it gets smarter (they just added Gemini 2.0 Flash; can't wait to try that out).
cruffle_duffle 2y ago
I wish cursor was an extension of VSCode and not a fork.
- diggan 2y ago
  Does is matter in practice? Is there stuff you can do in VSCode that isn't possible in Cursor? I'm not a user of either, so honest question.
  - machine_ghost 2y ago
    I don't know Cursor, but VS Code is a very full-featured editor with many years behind it; I rather doubt an upstart editor could achieve full feature parity with it so quickly. But that's almost beside the point: even if it had perfectly identical functionality, people would still want to use VS Code, if only for its well-established ecosystem of extensions.
    - diggan 2y ago
      AFAIK, Cursor is a fork of VS Code, so everything you wrote also applies to Cursor. Hence my question.
    - simicd 2y ago
      Since it is a fork of VS Code you can install any VS Code extension in Cursor (although manually): https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension
    - tomduncalf 2y ago
      Cursor is a fork of VS Code so most of the UI is identical and it can use the majority of extensions. Some extensions are MS only though and they may start using this as a moat, who knows!
      - diggan 2y ago
        > Some extensions are MS only though Is that really true? According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931088 ("VSCode Marketplace Web Pages No Longer Allow Direct VSIX Downloads"), you can still manually download extensions via cURL et al, if you really want to. Probably will disappear in the future though.
hidingOnBush 2y ago
People are sleeping on codeium. I've found their AI assistant to be much better than cursor
- lolinder 2y ago
  How's their autocomplete? I'm honestly not interested in tighter integration of chatbots. What blew me away about Cursor was how much better it was at autocomplete. I honestly probably would have tried it sooner if people emphasized that strongly enough in online dialogs, but it weirdly always seems to get relegated to an afterthought compared to the flashy chatbot, which was... fine, I guess?
  - baq 2y ago
    Because the composer is actually the bees knees, especially on larger projects where you need to reference say 5 different files with interface definitions and 3 other libraries using them.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      That doesn't really answer my question about autocomplete. I don't actually find these editors useful, they try to do too much too fast. Cursor wasn't much better than Aider, which wasn't great. Where I do find value is in the autocomplete/next edit functionality.
      - baq 2y ago
        Yeah the tab completion is so much better than copilot 3 months ago (which is when I switched to cursor 100%) it isn't even funny. Copilot was getting less useful as the time went by - I guess they wanted to make it cheaper and dropped the ball on quality. Cursor OTOH sometimes reads minds.
  - TiredOfLife 2y ago
    The free Codeium autocomplete was what I was using for the past year and it was really good. And Windsurf added Supercomplete (basically Cursors tab tab compete), but only in paid version.
hassleblad23 2y ago
Github has completely abandoned the Intellij Copilot plugin it seems. Even model selection is not supported. This is good for Jetbrains though because they have their own competing AI service. Jetbrains AI doesn't support multiline edits in tab completion or chat, but it does in the inline prompt mode (although its limited to the same file only).
- jghn 2y ago
  Yeah. I just wish that VSCode didn't feel so crude coming from 10+ years using JetBrains IDEs. Things I feel are table stakes like nice test run/debug functionality seem like big hurdles. Perhaps it's just a learning curve & I need to get used to it, but whenever I dive into how to replicate functionality I feel is important it seems the answer is at best "it's complicated". It's a shame as this is by far not the only thing in which I have interest that seems to have fully shifted over to VSCode
- armchairhacker 2y ago
  IntelliJ with Cursor-like autocomplete or Cursor with IntelliJ-quality general IDE tooling (lookup/rename symbol, diagnostics, and general UI) would be the ultimate editor. IntelliJ’s autocomplete was really bad last time I tried it, and if it’s still only single line it’s still bad. Fortunately GitHub copilot in IntelliJ is good, maybe as good as Cursor except that it can’t delete/rewrite code or jump to different locations. IMO agents aren’t nearly as important for either team to focus on, because they can be used outside of the IDE or in a separate IDE. I think the teams who develop the best agents will be big model-trainers and/or teams dedicated to agents, not teams writing IDEs.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    Try Augment https://www.augmentcode.com/ https://www.augmentcode.com/ The IntelliJ integration works really well. Not sure why they aren't more widely known.
twistedgost 2y ago
The feature you are referring to was also announced in VSCode and is called Next edit suggestions for Copilot. Currently in preview: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-02-06-next-edit-suggestions-agent-mode-and-prompts-files-for-github-copilot-in-vs-code-january-release-v0-24/#next-edit-suggestions-public-preview https://github.blog/changelog/2025-02-06-next-edit-suggestio...
zn44 2y ago
i've started using aider with https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html works great and you can keep using jetbrains IDEs
petercooper 2y ago
JetBrains has got its own version in the pipeline as well: https://blog.jetbrains.com/junie/2025/01/meet-junie-your-coding-agent-by-jetbrains/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/junie/2025/01/meet-junie-your-cod...

theasisa 2y ago

I tried Cursor a couple of years ago and wasn't impressed - has it improved a lot? I only use autocomplete, not the chat function and at the time found CoPilot superior.

baq 2y ago
It has improved but you're missing out if you aren't using the big ticket features. I tab myself to solutions, too, but if there's a react view to do, I dish out the composer and am literally 10x faster - what would previously take a day now takes an hour. If there's an interface to create out of a json blob, I paste the blob and just tell it to make an interface, then clean up the types a bit, etc.
sturza 2y ago
Years?
- Gothmog69 2y ago
  Tried cursor on my amiga II and wasn't that impressed tbh
  - snvzz 2y ago
    Cursor was an AmigaBASIC compiler for AmigaOS.
lolinder 2y ago
I tried it last month on a medium size personal project and was blown away by the autocomplete. I'd previously staunchly refused to try it on the grounds that I'm too productive in IntelliJ, but at this point I'm most likely going to start paying for both. I don't know if I'm ready to use it as a daily driver, but there are certain kinds of tasks—especially large refactors—where its ability to rapidly suggest and accurately make the changes across a file is incredibly valuable. It somehow manages to do all of that without ever breaking my sense of flow, which is more than I can say for Copilot's suggestions. And yeah, I'm with you that autocomplete is the way to go. I think chat is a red herring that will have long-term negative effects if it's used extensively in a codebase. Autocomplete keeps you in touch with the code while still benefiting from the co-pilot, and Cursor's UX for that is far and away the best I've seen.
- singularity2001 2y ago
  did you use intellij with copilot auto complete before that?
nirava 2y ago
I'd written off AI autocomplete as pointless after trying GitHub Copilot's a year ago. But Cursor's tab-autocomplete is actually really useful. It feels like it very much knows what I'm up to.
827a 2y ago
Cursor is ten times better than VSCode and Copilot. Its extraordinarily good at reducing two-minute tasks to 10-seconds, and the more you use it the better you get at identifying these two-minute tasks. Example (web dev): hit cmd+k --> "this is a two column layout. make sure the columns are the same size". It just does it. To do that myself I would have had to switch to a browser, google flex box, go to that classic flexbox cheat sheet that we all know and love, tweak around with the different values of justify-content and justify-self, realize that was the wrong approach, then arrive at the correct answer of making sure each column flex-grows identically. two minute task, now 10 seconds. hit cmd+k -> "flow these columns one-after-another on smaller screens" done. thirty second task, now 10 seconds. hit cmd+k -> "enable or disable the rendering of this component via props" done. new prop added, prop is flowed through to a `display` css property, easy. The autocomplete is pretty good, but can get annoying. You definitely have to get used to it. However, the cmd+k quick fix thing is insane. Its literally made me at least 200% more productive, and I think that might grow to 300% as I learn to use it and it gets smarter (they just added Gemini 2.0 Flash; can't wait to try that out).

cruffle_duffle 2y ago

I wish cursor was an extension of VSCode and not a fork.

diggan 2y ago
Does is matter in practice? Is there stuff you can do in VSCode that isn't possible in Cursor? I'm not a user of either, so honest question.
- machine_ghost 2y ago
  I don't know Cursor, but VS Code is a very full-featured editor with many years behind it; I rather doubt an upstart editor could achieve full feature parity with it so quickly. But that's almost beside the point: even if it had perfectly identical functionality, people would still want to use VS Code, if only for its well-established ecosystem of extensions.
  - diggan 2y ago
    AFAIK, Cursor is a fork of VS Code, so everything you wrote also applies to Cursor. Hence my question.
  - simicd 2y ago
    Since it is a fork of VS Code you can install any VS Code extension in Cursor (although manually): https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension https://www.cursor.com/how-to-install-extension
  - tomduncalf 2y ago
    Cursor is a fork of VS Code so most of the UI is identical and it can use the majority of extensions. Some extensions are MS only though and they may start using this as a moat, who knows!
    - diggan 2y ago
      > Some extensions are MS only though Is that really true? According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42931088 ("VSCode Marketplace Web Pages No Longer Allow Direct VSIX Downloads"), you can still manually download extensions via cURL et al, if you really want to. Probably will disappear in the future though.

hidingOnBush 2y ago

People are sleeping on codeium. I've found their AI assistant to be much better than cursor

lolinder 2y ago
How's their autocomplete? I'm honestly not interested in tighter integration of chatbots. What blew me away about Cursor was how much better it was at autocomplete. I honestly probably would have tried it sooner if people emphasized that strongly enough in online dialogs, but it weirdly always seems to get relegated to an afterthought compared to the flashy chatbot, which was... fine, I guess?
- baq 2y ago
  Because the composer is actually the bees knees, especially on larger projects where you need to reference say 5 different files with interface definitions and 3 other libraries using them.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    That doesn't really answer my question about autocomplete. I don't actually find these editors useful, they try to do too much too fast. Cursor wasn't much better than Aider, which wasn't great. Where I do find value is in the autocomplete/next edit functionality.
    - baq 2y ago
      Yeah the tab completion is so much better than copilot 3 months ago (which is when I switched to cursor 100%) it isn't even funny. Copilot was getting less useful as the time went by - I guess they wanted to make it cheaper and dropped the ball on quality. Cursor OTOH sometimes reads minds.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  The free Codeium autocomplete was what I was using for the past year and it was really good. And Windsurf added Supercomplete (basically Cursors tab tab compete), but only in paid version.

hassleblad23 2y ago

Github has completely abandoned the Intellij Copilot plugin it seems. Even model selection is not supported. This is good for Jetbrains though because they have their own competing AI service. Jetbrains AI doesn't support multiline edits in tab completion or chat, but it does in the inline prompt mode (although its limited to the same file only).

jghn 2y ago
Yeah. I just wish that VSCode didn't feel so crude coming from 10+ years using JetBrains IDEs. Things I feel are table stakes like nice test run/debug functionality seem like big hurdles. Perhaps it's just a learning curve & I need to get used to it, but whenever I dive into how to replicate functionality I feel is important it seems the answer is at best "it's complicated". It's a shame as this is by far not the only thing in which I have interest that seems to have fully shifted over to VSCode
armchairhacker 2y ago
IntelliJ with Cursor-like autocomplete or Cursor with IntelliJ-quality general IDE tooling (lookup/rename symbol, diagnostics, and general UI) would be the ultimate editor. IntelliJ’s autocomplete was really bad last time I tried it, and if it’s still only single line it’s still bad. Fortunately GitHub copilot in IntelliJ is good, maybe as good as Cursor except that it can’t delete/rewrite code or jump to different locations. IMO agents aren’t nearly as important for either team to focus on, because they can be used outside of the IDE or in a separate IDE. I think the teams who develop the best agents will be big model-trainers and/or teams dedicated to agents, not teams writing IDEs.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  Try Augment https://www.augmentcode.com/ https://www.augmentcode.com/ The IntelliJ integration works really well. Not sure why they aren't more widely known.

twistedgost 2y ago

The feature you are referring to was also announced in VSCode and is called Next edit suggestions for Copilot. Currently in preview: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-02-06-next-edit-suggestions-agent-mode-and-prompts-files-for-github-copilot-in-vs-code-january-release-v0-24/#next-edit-suggestions-public-preview https://github.blog/changelog/2025-02-06-next-edit-suggestio...

zn44 2y ago

i've started using aider with https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html works great and you can keep using jetbrains IDEs

petercooper 2y ago

JetBrains has got its own version in the pipeline as well: https://blog.jetbrains.com/junie/2025/01/meet-junie-your-coding-agent-by-jetbrains/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/junie/2025/01/meet-junie-your-cod...