3 ms·

>Some are better at the auto complete (Copilot), others at the agent flow (Claude Code). Some aim to be the best for non-technical people (Bolt or Replit), othe

>Some are better at the auto complete (Copilot), others at the agent flow (Claude Code). Some aim to be the best for non-technical people (Bolt or Replit), others for large enterprises (again, Copilot). Still, all of this "differentiation" ends up making a 1-2% difference in product. In fact, I can't stress enough how much the UX and core functionality of these tools is essentially identical. Is this exclusively referring to the ux or full functionality? Because I can tell you straight away that cursor (Claude) vs copilot is not a 1% difference. Most people in my company pay their own cursor license even though we have copilot for available for free.

tyleo 2y ago
Agreed, I’ve used both at work and personal projects. Copilot auto complete is great but it isn’t ground breaking. Cursor has built near entire features for me. I think copilot could get there TBH. I love most Microsoft dev tools and IDEs. But it really isn’t there yet in my opinion.
theahura 2y ago
Can you say more? I was referring to UX, as that is the main product. Cursor isn't providing their own models, or at least most people that I'm aware of are bringing their own keys. I haven't used copilot extensively but my understanding is that they now have feature parity at the IDE level, but the underlying models aren't as good.
- rfoo 2y ago
  > Cursor isn't providing their own models For use cases demanding the most intelligent model, yes they aren't. However, there are cases that you just can't use best models due to latency. For example next edit prediction, and applying diffs [0] generated by the super intelligent model you decided to use. AFAIK, Cursor does use their own model for these, which is why you can't use Cursor without paying them $20/mo even if you bring your own Anthropic API key. Applying what Claude generated in Copilot is just so painfully slow to the point that I just don't want to use it. If you tried Cursor early on, I recommend you update your prior now. Cursor had been redesigned about a year ago, and it is a completely different product compared to what they first released 2 years ago. [0] We may not need a model to apply diff soon, as Aider leaderboard shows, recent models started to be able to generate perfect diff that actually applies.
  - theahura 2y ago
    (I most recently used cursor in October before switching to Avante, so I suspect I've experienced the version of the tool you're talking about. I mostly didn't use the autocomplete, I mostly used the chat-q&a sidebar.)
    - rfoo 2y ago
      And I pay Cursor only for autocomplete - this explains the difference I guess. I do sometimes use Composer (or Agent in recent versions), but it's being increasingly less useful in my case. Not sure why :(
    - nicoritschel 2y ago
      The redesign was ~5 months ago. If you switched in October, you 100% have not used the current Cursor experience.
- torben-friis 2y ago
  >Can you say more? My experience is that copilot is basically a better autocomplete, but anything beyond a three liner will deviate from current context making the answer useless - not following the codebase's convention, using packages that aren't present, not seeing the big picture, and so on. In contrast, cursor is eerily aware of its surroundings, being able to point out that your choice of naming conflicts with somewhere else, that your test is failing because of a weird config in a completely different place leaking to your suite, and so on. I use cursor without bringing my own keys, so it defaults to claude-3.5-sonnet. I always use it in composer mode. Though I can't tell you with full certainty the reasons for its better performance, I strongly suspect it's related to how it searches the codebase for context to provide the model with. It gets to the point that I'm frequently starting tasks by dropping a Jira description with some extra info to it directly and watching it work. It won't do the job by itself in one shot, but it will surface entry points, issues and small details in such a way that it's more useful to start there than from a blank slate, which is already a big plus. It can also be used as a rubber duck colleague asking it whether a design is good, potential for refactorings, bottlenecks, boy scouting and so on.
Jcampuzano2 2y ago
Agreed, although we're strictly prohibited from using cursor at work in enterprise, though they have been in discussion for an enterprise license. I use cursor for personal work though and it's night and day, even with the recent copilot agent mode additions. I told my CTO who asked about it if we should look into cursor and I told him straight up that in comparison copilot is basically useless.
- nativeit 2y ago
  What are the most dramatic differences?
  - aerhardt 2y ago
    I don't use Cursor (I'm on Jetbrains) but from what I read it must be the autocomplete. Github Copilot is literally unusable. I've tried it many times in the last month and everything it suggests is stupid and utterly wrong. The suggestions are not subtly wrong - they often have nothing to do with what I'm working on. It wasn't this bad at the beginning. Mind you, I code mainly in Python, pretty common stuff most of the time. I keep reading here that Cursor has great autocomplete so we could be talking about a 1000% improvement compared to Copilot rather than 1% as on of the other commenters is positing.
    - wavemode 2y ago
      Personally I've seen Cursor make boneheaded autocomplete suggestions at roughly the same rate that Copilot does. And Cursor was also buggy in other annoying ways, and its "jump" suggestions (where it tries to predict where to move your cursor next) were usually stupid. So I ultimately switched back to Copilot.
      - aerhardt 2y ago
        I wouldn't qualify the suggestions I'm getting as boneheaded, but rather disastrous. I have completions turned off by default because they're so stupid it's unbearable. But then maybe a few times a month I'm low on energy and faced with the typical repetitive task: fill out this large dictionary with predictable values, type these classes which are variations of another, write some very grindy tests, what-have-you. I turn it on in the hopes that it will save me some work, see what it's suggesting, and turn it off back again in seconds. It literally cannot pick up on blatantly predictable local patterns anymore. I don't know what's happened to it because it used to be able to at least do that.
mellosouls 2y ago
cursor (Claude) vs copilot is not a 1% difference This is true, but as a user of both and champion of Cursor - VS Code Copilot is quickly catching up.

tyleo 2y ago

Agreed, I’ve used both at work and personal projects. Copilot auto complete is great but it isn’t ground breaking. Cursor has built near entire features for me. I think copilot could get there TBH. I love most Microsoft dev tools and IDEs. But it really isn’t there yet in my opinion.

theahura 2y ago

Can you say more? I was referring to UX, as that is the main product. Cursor isn't providing their own models, or at least most people that I'm aware of are bringing their own keys. I haven't used copilot extensively but my understanding is that they now have feature parity at the IDE level, but the underlying models aren't as good.

rfoo 2y ago
> Cursor isn't providing their own models For use cases demanding the most intelligent model, yes they aren't. However, there are cases that you just can't use best models due to latency. For example next edit prediction, and applying diffs [0] generated by the super intelligent model you decided to use. AFAIK, Cursor does use their own model for these, which is why you can't use Cursor without paying them $20/mo even if you bring your own Anthropic API key. Applying what Claude generated in Copilot is just so painfully slow to the point that I just don't want to use it. If you tried Cursor early on, I recommend you update your prior now. Cursor had been redesigned about a year ago, and it is a completely different product compared to what they first released 2 years ago. [0] We may not need a model to apply diff soon, as Aider leaderboard shows, recent models started to be able to generate perfect diff that actually applies.
- theahura 2y ago
  (I most recently used cursor in October before switching to Avante, so I suspect I've experienced the version of the tool you're talking about. I mostly didn't use the autocomplete, I mostly used the chat-q&a sidebar.)
  - rfoo 2y ago
    And I pay Cursor only for autocomplete - this explains the difference I guess. I do sometimes use Composer (or Agent in recent versions), but it's being increasingly less useful in my case. Not sure why :(
  - nicoritschel 2y ago
    The redesign was ~5 months ago. If you switched in October, you 100% have not used the current Cursor experience.
torben-friis 2y ago
>Can you say more? My experience is that copilot is basically a better autocomplete, but anything beyond a three liner will deviate from current context making the answer useless - not following the codebase's convention, using packages that aren't present, not seeing the big picture, and so on. In contrast, cursor is eerily aware of its surroundings, being able to point out that your choice of naming conflicts with somewhere else, that your test is failing because of a weird config in a completely different place leaking to your suite, and so on. I use cursor without bringing my own keys, so it defaults to claude-3.5-sonnet. I always use it in composer mode. Though I can't tell you with full certainty the reasons for its better performance, I strongly suspect it's related to how it searches the codebase for context to provide the model with. It gets to the point that I'm frequently starting tasks by dropping a Jira description with some extra info to it directly and watching it work. It won't do the job by itself in one shot, but it will surface entry points, issues and small details in such a way that it's more useful to start there than from a blank slate, which is already a big plus. It can also be used as a rubber duck colleague asking it whether a design is good, potential for refactorings, bottlenecks, boy scouting and so on.

Jcampuzano2 2y ago

Agreed, although we're strictly prohibited from using cursor at work in enterprise, though they have been in discussion for an enterprise license. I use cursor for personal work though and it's night and day, even with the recent copilot agent mode additions. I told my CTO who asked about it if we should look into cursor and I told him straight up that in comparison copilot is basically useless.

nativeit 2y ago
What are the most dramatic differences?
- aerhardt 2y ago
  I don't use Cursor (I'm on Jetbrains) but from what I read it must be the autocomplete. Github Copilot is literally unusable. I've tried it many times in the last month and everything it suggests is stupid and utterly wrong. The suggestions are not subtly wrong - they often have nothing to do with what I'm working on. It wasn't this bad at the beginning. Mind you, I code mainly in Python, pretty common stuff most of the time. I keep reading here that Cursor has great autocomplete so we could be talking about a 1000% improvement compared to Copilot rather than 1% as on of the other commenters is positing.
  - wavemode 2y ago
    Personally I've seen Cursor make boneheaded autocomplete suggestions at roughly the same rate that Copilot does. And Cursor was also buggy in other annoying ways, and its "jump" suggestions (where it tries to predict where to move your cursor next) were usually stupid. So I ultimately switched back to Copilot.
    - aerhardt 2y ago
      I wouldn't qualify the suggestions I'm getting as boneheaded, but rather disastrous. I have completions turned off by default because they're so stupid it's unbearable. But then maybe a few times a month I'm low on energy and faced with the typical repetitive task: fill out this large dictionary with predictable values, type these classes which are variations of another, write some very grindy tests, what-have-you. I turn it on in the hopes that it will save me some work, see what it's suggesting, and turn it off back again in seconds. It literally cannot pick up on blatantly predictable local patterns anymore. I don't know what's happened to it because it used to be able to at least do that.

mellosouls 2y ago

cursor (Claude) vs copilot is not a 1% difference This is true, but as a user of both and champion of Cursor - VS Code Copilot is quickly catching up.