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Why would I use Aider instead of Cursor? One offers me an IDE that I already used with AI capabilities, the other one is in the terminal (according to the homep

Why would I use Aider instead of Cursor? One offers me an IDE that I already used with AI capabilities, the other one is in the terminal (according to the homepage)

BeetleB 1y ago
Aider works with any IDE. As in you don't need to type your prompts in a terminal. https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html Furthermore many IDEs have a plug-in for Aider. Is Cursor open source? If not, I expect it to be buggier in the long run. And less featureful. It seriously has no moat.
- iamsaitam 1y ago
  That's not working in any IDE is it? The crux of the matter is the level of integration, with Cursor (and others) I can apply the suggestions via autocomplete and see git diffs with agent code. I'm not arguing if there's a moat or not for Cursor, but comparing Aider to Cursor is a vastly different UX.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    > That's not working in any IDE is it? The crux of the matter is the level of integration, with Cursor (and others) I can apply the suggestions via autocomplete and see git diffs with agent code. Would a simple VSCode plugin for Aider not be able to do that? I haven't tried it out, but Aidermacs (https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs) is an Emacs plugin that supposedly mimics some of Cursor's feature - but by using Aider. I'm not saying Cursor is bad or anything. It may well be as good as Aider or a bit better. But it's not vastly better. If you had $1M to spare, would you risk investing in Cursor? Especially knowing that open source solutions are as good or at worst not far behind? In the long run, some open source solution (Aider or something else) is going to eat Cursor's lunch. BTW, I too initially wanted something that worked in my IDE. Then I just gave Aider a try and realized I prefer it being an external tool.

Why would I use Aider instead of Cursor? One offers me an IDE that I already used with AI capabilities, the other one is in the terminal (according to the homepage)

BeetleB 1y ago

Aider works with any IDE. As in you don't need to type your prompts in a terminal. https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/watch.html Furthermore many IDEs have a plug-in for Aider. Is Cursor open source? If not, I expect it to be buggier in the long run. And less featureful. It seriously has no moat.

iamsaitam 1y ago
That's not working in any IDE is it? The crux of the matter is the level of integration, with Cursor (and others) I can apply the suggestions via autocomplete and see git diffs with agent code. I'm not arguing if there's a moat or not for Cursor, but comparing Aider to Cursor is a vastly different UX.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  > That's not working in any IDE is it? The crux of the matter is the level of integration, with Cursor (and others) I can apply the suggestions via autocomplete and see git diffs with agent code. Would a simple VSCode plugin for Aider not be able to do that? I haven't tried it out, but Aidermacs (https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs) is an Emacs plugin that supposedly mimics some of Cursor's feature - but by using Aider. I'm not saying Cursor is bad or anything. It may well be as good as Aider or a bit better. But it's not vastly better. If you had $1M to spare, would you risk investing in Cursor? Especially knowing that open source solutions are as good or at worst not far behind? In the long run, some open source solution (Aider or something else) is going to eat Cursor's lunch. BTW, I too initially wanted something that worked in my IDE. Then I just gave Aider a try and realized I prefer it being an external tool.