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Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. Th

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. Both Windsurf and Cursor are riddled with bugs that don't exist upstream, _especially_ in their AI assistant features beyond the VSCode core. Context management which is supposed to be the core featured added is itself incredibly poorly implemented [1]. Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_vs_code_subtracts_cc_extension/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/microsoft_vs_code_sub... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1kbt790/rules_in_496_major_issues_uncovered/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1kbt790/rules_in_49...

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. We've seen this before with Office. We'll see it again.
- rvz 1y ago
  ...as done with Teams. Microsoft Build is this month [0] and it will tell where they are going next (other than price cuts). I'm expecting disappointment for now, but also expecting GitHub Copilot to be upgraded. Then we'll see if they are ahead or so far behind. [0] https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home
  - rvz 1y ago
    Well well well: [0] [0] https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2025/05/19/openSourceAIEditor https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2025/05/19/openSourceAIE...
- blitzar 1y ago
  They don't even need to be good - just in the bundle you (your company) are already paying for and the competition can't compete.
- CptanPanic 1y ago
  At the speed that AI programming is going, there will be something else that they are falling behind of that will exist in a year. Just like Agents now, they are adding them, but will always be a step behind progress.
timabdulla 1y ago
I mean, the fact that OpenAI, at the bleeding edge of it all, has decided to buy an IDE is a rather strong hint that the future of agents handling entire engineering tickets might be further out than many believe. If autonomous agents were just around the corner, then why wouldn't OpenAI bet on their own Codex product obviating (most) need for an IDE and save themselves the $3 billion?
- bix6 1y ago
  It sounds like the openAI team is overburdened (I guess they aren’t AI super users yet) so this may be their only option. Easy entry into a key segment, at least for now, and locks out competitors.
  - htrp 1y ago
    so much for ai turning everyone at openai into 1000x coders
  - conartist6 1y ago
    As a competitor in that key segment I don't feel locked out. I could almost jump for joy that this very weak-tea move is the most they can do with that much money. They're just quintupling down on the technology of 50 years ago. There's no threat to me at all here as a creator of from-first-principles IDE technology.
    - bix6 1y ago
      What are you working on?
      - conartist6 1y ago
        It's not too hard to find out, but I'm going to make a big announcement in a few days so my official message at the moment is "stay tuned"
        1y ago
robinhood 1y ago
"riddled with bugs". "incredibly poorly implemented". Man, what are you talking about? Your comment seems based on nothing but what you read online. Have you used Cursor on a daily basis? I have. Every day for six months now. I haven't encountered a single bug that prevent me to work. Moreover, while Microsoft tries to catch up lately, it's still very far behind, especially on the "tab autocompletion" front.
- arjunaaqa 1y ago
  Plus, cursor & windsurf excel in user experience which is an alien concept to Microsoft.
  - codyvoda 1y ago
    yeah Microsoft could never conceivably develop an extensible source available IDE people love so much they even fork to build $3B companies on the scraps of. absolutely alien!
- Androider 1y ago
  I use Cursor in anger every day. The core idea behind Cursor is genuinely smart. But the execution is like the classic "unfinished horse" meme [0]. Microsoft provides the editor base, foundation models provide the smarts, and Cursor provides some, in my experience, extremely buggy context management features. There is no moat. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unfinished-horse-drawing-flaming-horse-rating https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unfinished-horse-drawing-flam...
- hobo_mark 1y ago
  I have tried (stopped a couple months ago). The Python extensions broke all the time while they manually patched around the latest MS release a few days later. Syntax highlighting glitched every other day requiring a full reload. Remote dev via SSH or tunnels also randomly stopped working. Liveshare... Essentially they do not own the platform their core product is built on. Maybe it's fine if you only do local development in other languages (Javascript?), but I completely swore it off.
- 1y ago
doix 1y ago
> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. I agree with the first part, I'm much less optimistic about the second part. I suspect they will create something that is worse, but cheaper if you already pay for Github/Office 365/whatever. Then many large enterprises will switch to save money whilst the engineers complain, just like with Teams.
- preciousoo 1y ago
  If the VS Code team are delivering the product, I have some amount of trust. If it’s the VS team, good luck to everyone involved
  - deburo 1y ago
    Indeed, Copilot within Visual Studio is nowhere close as good as Copilot within VSCode, and even that is still worse than Cursor in my experience.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    VSCode is still miles behind for .NET and C++ tooling, have a bit of fate on VS team.
    - preciousoo 1y ago
      What’s the use of being miles ahead if you’re traveling in the wrong direction?
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        Doesn't look like, given Windows market share.
        troupo 1y ago
        Not just Windows. I find .net a better choice for backend/microservices than Java, for example
Szpadel 1y ago
For someone that never used windsurf, what features does it have that GitHub copilot does not? Reading their webpages I didn't spot any "killer feature" that would convince me to switch. I always felt that cursor and windsurf should be just extension to vscode instead of a fork. Was there some missing functionality is vscode that was missing? Is it still missing? There are some extensions that work in this way and allow to use multiple implementations depending on task at hand without any long term commitment. I feel like such fragmentation is by artificial just to lock users in single ecosystem.
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  It can write a lot of code, that works, better than vscode can (right now). It's in a lot of ways the OpenAI story itself: Can they keep an edge? Or is there at least something that will keep people from just switching product? Who knows. People have opinions, of course. OpenAIs opinion (which should reasonably count for something, them being the current AI-as-a-product leader) is worth $3B as of today.
  - mliker 1y ago
    Windsurf works well with Claude and Gemini models, so if OpenAI forces Windsurf users to only use OpenAI models, then it wouldn't be as useful.
    - throwup238 1y ago
      I doubt they'll restrict it to their own models. The amount of business intel they'd get on the coding performance of competing models would be invaluable.
    - jonny_eh 1y ago
      They'll make ChatGPT the default, and defaults are powerful.
- ZeroTalent 1y ago
  It's better at coding, but they are essentially paying for users. I would also argue that the product could be built over two weekends with a small team. They offer some groundbreaking solutions, but since we know that they work and how, it's easy to replicate them. That also means they have significant talent there. Hence, they are also buying the employees. The code base itself is basically worth nothing, in my opinion.
arresin 1y ago
Copilot owns the platform, had an amazing head start and yet still is the worst option available. I don’t mean to be harsh but this was a titanic fumble.
- beardedwizard 1y ago
  GitHub has been failing upward for more than 5 years. They could have totally dominated software development and security - failed. Could have been the undisputed champion of code hosting - failed. Should have dominated development co-pilots - failed. I actually find it a little reassuring that they can't seem to get out of their own way.
  - stevage 1y ago
    They're not the champion of code hosting?
    - MassiveQuasar 1y ago
      They were before they got acquired by Microsoft. The fact that they are is not the results of the Microsoft takeover.
      - stevage 1y ago
        Then I don't understand the inclusion in the list above.
    - beardedwizard 1y ago
      It's a close call - I make this based on the fact that GitHub is viewed as an anti-choice by some in the community, a huge change from the "you don't use GitHub?!?!" energy they had pre-acquisition. The MS acquisition traded the developer community to briefly appeal to enterprises, then quickly let both down.
      - ctkhn 1y ago
bigbinary 1y ago
These are investment plays a company makes when holding too much money, and not a smart move this early in the technology imo Buying competition while everyone’s still fighting might straddle you with a lame horse
dist-epoch 1y ago
Cursor ($9 bil) has a higher valuation than JetBrains ($7 bil). Think about that.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  Tells me that the markets ability to sensibly valuate companies is pretty messed up.
  - singularity2001 1y ago
    or intellij is beyond its peak while cursor is just on the rise
    - slt2021 1y ago
      this. valuation is the discounted cash flow of expected future cash flows, not the past successes
  - xnx 1y ago
    These aren't public companies, so the values are mostly made up.
- cellis 1y ago
  I never did like JetBrains primary product, IntelliJ. It felt clunky even compared to Eclipse for Java, let alone VSCode for … everything. DataGrip is the lone standout imo, but as of the last update I paid for, it didn’t have even basic copilot
- rchaud 1y ago
  Non-public numbers may as well be pulled out of thin air. WeWork was a $50bn company according to its VC bagholders, and that was marked down by 80% once they released their books to the general public.
- aledalgrande 1y ago
  What did OpenAI buy for $3B? That's what I'm wondering.
marricks 1y ago
Wow, folks almost had me convinced MS turned a new leaf 5 years ago. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: embrace, extend, extinguish.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Nah, folks keep giving human behaviours to big corporations instead of understanding everyone is in the game for the shareholders.
  - aero142 1y ago
    If a company can align it's business model with user goals, then it can work in the long run. Apple has somewhat aligned it's integrated hardware sales business model with user privacy. Google and Meta are advertising companies and capturing user data and attention will always drive the business.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Apple does ads as well, it just keeps all metadata to themselves.
      - marricks 1y ago
        Yes, but it's not a meaningful part of their revenue unlike Google where it's' their entire revenue. They are very different companies in structure and it certainly is a "pick your poison" but it's completely stupid to act like they're the same on this front. Apple is better on user privacy ...unless you care about state actors, which you should, in which case your data is the US government's either way.
- tomnipotent 1y ago
  Do you consider the Microsoft-managed plug-in marketplace and infrastructure to be a private or public resource? From my understanding Microsoft has never been vague on the position that the plugin marketplace is exclusive to the official VS Code distribution, and the TOS specifically forbids forks from doing so. Cursor and other forks have decided to circumvent this, some even going so far as to use proxies to bypass restrictions. I'm not convinced Microsoft owes other billion dollar companies free access to a product they've built, curated, and supported for over a decade. Plug-in authors are not restricted from publishing their products on competing marketplaces.
m3kw9 1y ago
Microsoft is slow af for a company that size. Maybe yeah, they are slow because of that size. Don’t bet on them out accelerating a startup, the evidence so far in the past year is that they will stay a year behind every year
leonidasv 1y ago
The thing is: we should not need standalone editors just to use AI coding agents. They could be just plugins, but Microsoft does not want to bend the plugin API enough for that. Windsurf has a "plugin edition" for JetBrains IDEs that works really, really well[0] (they also have a VSCode plugin[1] but it's lacking in comparison). However, given that JetBrains also have their own AI offering[2], I'm not sure how long that will last too... [0] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/20540-windsurf-plugin-formerly-codeium-for-python-js-java-go-- https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/20540-windsurf-plugin-f... [1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium.codeium https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium.... [2] https://www.jetbrains.com/ai/ https://www.jetbrains.com/ai/
- owendarko 1y ago
  There are already a bunch of open source, free, and popular "AI coding agent" extensions for VS Code: 1) Cline (1.4mil downloads) 2) Roo Code (a fork of Cline, 450k downloads) Still a drop in the bucket compared to Cursor in terms of # of users, but they're growing pretty fast. Disclaimer: I maintain Kilo Code, which competes with 1) and 2) so I'm pretty familiar with this space/the growth patterns.
  - htrp 1y ago
    How are you differentiating from the cline/roo's of the world?
    - boleary-gl 1y ago
      Our plan is to be a superset of Cline and Roo's features (we already have all the major features from both) [0] We also have our own provider, which means no need to bring your own API keys (you can if you like, but it is batteries included by default) and we're not charging anything on top of the API pricing. Instead of monetizing on individual developers, we want it to be free for them and make money eventually off enterprise contracts [1] [0]: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-building-a-superset https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-building-a-supe... [1]: https://kilocode.ai https://kilocode.ai
aravindputrevu 1y ago
I completely disagree and feel MS would never do it. Not a MS Employee, but they have moved on from such battles. They should have restricted the Marketplace several years ago, however, they are doing it now. With C++, they are part of MFC's, they are the legal owners, not like Google vs Oracle in case of Java. Lastly, with AI Code IDEs I think yes, there is a case, the need for IDE might be very less. Like a steering on a self driving car.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  ISO C++ has nothing to do with MFC.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Why should they have restricted the marketplace? It's really annoying imo that they lock vs codium out of the more useful plugins like the SSH remote one. However luckily most only take a setting or two to enable anyway.
behnamoh 1y ago
> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. Microsoft software quality has gone downhill recently, and I'm not going to bet on them delivering something more polished than WS and Cursor here. Side: all images on Microsoft websites are low resolution! it's like they don't even check their own website.
- moi2388 1y ago
  30% of their code is now written with AI. Their “programmers” are more busy with making blogs and videos than functioning tests or technical documentation, and they start using JavaScript and Python for everything. I’m not surprised their quality went to shit. There are some pearls left, C# in general is pretty good, and Aspire is becoming quite neat. The latter I think mainly because David Fowler is just a great developer
  - T0Bi 1y ago
    /s? Because if you're referencing to a headline (without reading the article) that was on H a couple of days ago, it stated that 20-30% of the code in the repos was written by software. Software != AI To quote wongarsu in the same post: "Considering that most of their software has been developed for decades and AI assistants have only started becoming useful in the last ~4 years it would be very surprising if 30% of their code is AI written. I doubt they even touched 30% of their code in the last 4 years. But what is perfectly plausible is that 30% of their code is written by code generators. Microsoft has a lot of interface code. All the windows DLLs that are just thin syscall interfaces, the COM and OLE interfaces in their office suite and everywhere else, whatever Office uses nowadays for interoperability to allow you to embed content of one product in another, whatever APIs their online products use, etc. In the leaked Windows XP source code it can be difficult to find the actual source code in between the boilerplate files containing repeated definitions, and in the decades since then the world has only leaned more into code generation." Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43841868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43841868
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mliker 1y ago
Agreed. Especially with tools like Claude Code, which can get better over time and remove the need to use Windsurf and Cursor.
tough 1y ago
Github Copilot is pretty much the same UI as cursor on vscode already
- cheema33 1y ago
  UI may be close. Functionality is very very different. Copilot is $10/month. Cursor is $20/month. I canceled my Copilot subscription after 2 months of using both. Compares to competition, Copilot has been garbage for quite some time.
  - kasey_junk 1y ago
    I’d love to know what specifically is better about cursor in your opinion? I’ve used both and have a hard time even listing a different feature.
dontlikeyoueith 1y ago
> Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. Probably. > And deliver them with far greater stability and polish That seems ... overly optimistic given MS's history.
- Onavo 1y ago
  Their devtools team is surprisingly competent when they choose to be. Pre-2015, people used Sublime Text, Atom, Textmate, Notepad++, Light Table, Brackets, Emacs/Vim, Intellij. VS code single handedly crushed all of them with code completion and language servers that require zero configuration. Emacs/Vim lost share, Jetbrains (and also Eclipse) were forced to release their own "lightweight" code editors, and everybody else became mostly irrelevant (except perhaps Sublime Text since it has the best native performance out of all editors).
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    I would contend that JetBrains has only grown even with VS Code around. They're still more than viable, support things on a near similar cadence (and even in some cases, faster and/or better) than VS Code gets support for it. I agree with the rest, they've all mostly lost market share or completely no longer exist due to VS Code, but not IntelliJ, that platform is going really strong. Though no doubt, VS Code has pushed JetBrains to rethink some things, and be better in general.
    - skydhash 1y ago
      It’s hard to compete with free when free is backed by lot of money.
      - no_wizard 1y ago
        Free doesn't matter here. JetBrains is an established toolset that people pay for. They've already been competing with free, and free didn't put them out of business. In some ways, free likely made business better than ever (I know alot of devs that started with VS Code and moved to JetBrains for various reasons) They can have all the money in the world and it doesn't mean much in this context. For while Microsoft is going to invest heavily in a Cursor / Windsurf like product and likely do alot to ship it in their editors - likely with exclusions or lag times between updates on other platforms - there's zero reason for Google to do this for example, when they could sell through Gemini for Code as an extension across all editors. I don't see JetBrains having issues because of AI tooling, for most of these companies, its a boon to be on the JetBrains platform. Especially because JetBrains has lots of enterprise customers who would naturally be very interested in buying AI tooling for their developers. Its a natural market
dmitrygr 1y ago
> Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets Care to place a bet?
sanderjd 1y ago
I'm frankly very skeptical of your last paragraph. That's not at all what seems useful to me. But we'll see! But I agree with you about the first part, and I think it's awesome for me as a user that all this competition to build a matter mousetrap is happening right now! I'm not as certain as you are that Microsoft will end up building a better version. It's definitely one of the likely outcomes. But it's also totally plausible that Cursor or Windsurf can win the race, even if they need to replace every single one of the MS extensions and entirely diverge the core IDE from upstream. These products are well capitalized and it's just not that hard to build the core pieces of an IDE.
999900000999 1y ago
>Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator. I think a few options for this already exist, but honestly they don't go far enough. I want something like an AI scrum master, for hyper agile teams, that can task out smaller tickets to AI sub agents. I would integrate this thing in with something like an AI powered Jira. Two arguments exists. 1. I need to take about 6 months off and start building this now, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get it done. Between a combination of vibe coding and maybe a bit of outsourced work ( looking at Eastern Europe), I could get this done with my personal funds. 2. To do this properly would probably require tens of millions of dollars. I'll probably burn myself out trying to do it solo without ultimately getting to a sellable product. The biggest issue here is to actually scale I would need to either have users bring their own LLM keys or have tens of thousands to spend on LLM tokens.
AlwaysRock 1y ago
I was a little late to jump on the cursor bandwagon but finally downloaded it because i liked the LLM chat interface in the sidebar. By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM chat interface in the sidebar. Yes Cursor had a bit better auto complete and maybe a few other things but it wasnt good enough that it was worth paying for. But I'm glad OpenAI is getting into the tooling space in this way. I cant wait to use all the cool features they build after VSCode rips them off.
- szundi 1y ago
  [dead]
- cheema33 1y ago
  > By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM chat interface in the sidebar. I am guessing you are talking about GitHub Copilot when you say VSCode. GitHub Copilot is far far inferior product when compared to Cursor, Windsurf or Augment Code. Most people who try almost any Copilot alternative for a reasonable amount of time end up canceling their Copilot subscription. I did, after two months of using both.
  - RobinL 1y ago
    How long ago was that? 6 months ago I switched from VS Code to Cursor, which at the time was FAR superior to Copilot. Around a month ago I switched back to VS Code, and found there's not much difference any more. Autocomplete in VS Code is still less good, but the agent mode in VS Code feels pretty similar to Cursor's (albeit a little slower, perhaps). To be honest I think both are quite limited by context length (in that they try to limit the context they send to the LLM and hence cost), and so I find myself using Gemini 2.5 in AI studio with the 1m context length, and asking it to generate instructions for Copilot (which seems to work pretty well)
    - AlwaysRock 1y ago
      Yup. I found cursor to be better but not good enough that it really made that much of a difference in my actual day to day.
FuckButtons 1y ago
I think you’re being overoptimistic about the skill ceiling that this generation of Ai is likely to have.
- DanHulton 1y ago
  Yeah. Every time I see entirely unfounded claims like that, I remember that I've been seeing them for literal years now. While there have definitely been improvements in AI capability, they have largely been very marginal, while the claimed "will handle entire engineering tickets" capability requires huge leaps in capability and reliability that _we just have not seen evidence for._ Mentally, I'm replacing claims like this with "it will do magic!" and I think I'm just about as likely to be correct.
- joshwcomeau 1y ago
  ++. Was surprised I had to scroll so far to find someone saying this!
3abiton 1y ago
This is the right take, but long term. Short term, it's just about investor hype. Cursor is becoming more mainstream and if OpenAI falls behind on this, they'll be losing momentum. But yes, the fields moves so fast, it'll be totally different in a year or 2. Does anyone recall langchain?
re5i5tor 1y ago
I have to admit skepticism re: “far greater stability and polish” from MS
maccard 1y ago
> Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator. I disagree, but would love to be wrong. These tools exploded onto the scene and were massive productivity helpers, but since their initial integrations they’ve churned rather than improved in the last 2 years. They are even worse when you try to iterate rather than just get them to one shot the problem space.
cft 1y ago
I am slightly more optimistic, because the API may not be fully centralized- there may be more than one foundational AI company in the end. Like WhatsApp exists because there's the iOS/Android duopoly, an agent-neutral IDE from a non-foundational company without its own API aspirations may continue to exist
gexos 1y ago
[flagged]
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  > If they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from forks, the open source pushback will be fierce—and that could backfire hard. Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft? Linux managed to do it but Linux is the biggest, most successful free software project there is. Firefox and its forks are a better example. If Mozilla stopped working on Firefox, the forks would be pretty much dead in the water: they simply do not have the man power necessary to maintain a modern browser.
  - cwkoss 1y ago
    Does microsoft have the wisdom to predict where this line of technology is headed, and/or the agility to course correct when their predictions don't quite hit the mark? Cursor blows copilot out of the water in my experience. Man power clearly isn't the most decisive factor in this battle.
    - rockwotj 1y ago
      Copilot is limited to 64k context window. Even if the underlying model is gemini with 20x that. It’s gotta be a major reason copilot is so bad in comparison. They are all the same sets of models under the hood
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mathgeek 1y ago
    > Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft? There are a fair number of examples where smaller companies and/or open source beat Microsoft's entrenched products. Usually a key indicator is that MS's products stagnate (which doesn't yet appear to be happening currently).
  - horns4lyfe 1y ago
prpl 1y ago
I view this as an another step in the push/pull between local things, remote things, local things remotely, thin clients, network partitioning, cloud, zero trust, etc... The last cycle I remember of this IMO is iPython -> Jupyterhub/Jupyterlab. Of course, iPython has existed for a long time, though that change was made because data was too big to analyze locally and it turns out it was more convenient to centrally manage kernels/images/libraries for convenience. MCP servers and Cursor/Windsurf changed that a bit, but it will end up centralized again at some point (or at least aggregated, if it's not already?). People are passing around lists of interesting MCP servers now, and that will be out of fashion in less than 12 months.
hnlurker22 1y ago
I just abandoned Windsurf because I found copy/pasting code with ChatGPT's web interface significantly better in terms of results.
- jonplackett 1y ago
  I’m still just copying and pasting. Was considering trying it. Is it really not any better?
  - hnlurker22 1y ago
    It wasn't any better for me. It deleted all my code. The answers were like it was a completely different model. I used Windsurf once and never opened it again
dughnut 1y ago
“And will deliver them with far greater stability and polish” Stable and polished are not words that ever came to my mind while using any Microsoft product.
rglover 1y ago
If Microsoft were smart, they'd just acquire Cline (or fork it), make it an official VSCode feature and be done with it. It smokes Cursor and Windsurf and it's a free plugin you can just install in un-forked VSCode.

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago

> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. We've seen this before with Office. We'll see it again.

rvz 1y ago
...as done with Teams. Microsoft Build is this month [0] and it will tell where they are going next (other than price cuts). I'm expecting disappointment for now, but also expecting GitHub Copilot to be upgraded. Then we'll see if they are ahead or so far behind. [0] https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home
- rvz 1y ago
  Well well well: [0] [0] https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2025/05/19/openSourceAIEditor https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2025/05/19/openSourceAIE...
blitzar 1y ago
They don't even need to be good - just in the bundle you (your company) are already paying for and the competition can't compete.
CptanPanic 1y ago
At the speed that AI programming is going, there will be something else that they are falling behind of that will exist in a year. Just like Agents now, they are adding them, but will always be a step behind progress.

timabdulla 1y ago

I mean, the fact that OpenAI, at the bleeding edge of it all, has decided to buy an IDE is a rather strong hint that the future of agents handling entire engineering tickets might be further out than many believe. If autonomous agents were just around the corner, then why wouldn't OpenAI bet on their own Codex product obviating (most) need for an IDE and save themselves the $3 billion?

bix6 1y ago
It sounds like the openAI team is overburdened (I guess they aren’t AI super users yet) so this may be their only option. Easy entry into a key segment, at least for now, and locks out competitors.
- htrp 1y ago
  so much for ai turning everyone at openai into 1000x coders
- conartist6 1y ago
  As a competitor in that key segment I don't feel locked out. I could almost jump for joy that this very weak-tea move is the most they can do with that much money. They're just quintupling down on the technology of 50 years ago. There's no threat to me at all here as a creator of from-first-principles IDE technology.
  - bix6 1y ago
    What are you working on?
    - conartist6 1y ago
      It's not too hard to find out, but I'm going to make a big announcement in a few days so my official message at the moment is "stay tuned"
      - 1y ago

robinhood 1y ago

"riddled with bugs". "incredibly poorly implemented". Man, what are you talking about? Your comment seems based on nothing but what you read online. Have you used Cursor on a daily basis? I have. Every day for six months now. I haven't encountered a single bug that prevent me to work. Moreover, while Microsoft tries to catch up lately, it's still very far behind, especially on the "tab autocompletion" front.

arjunaaqa 1y ago
Plus, cursor & windsurf excel in user experience which is an alien concept to Microsoft.
- codyvoda 1y ago
  yeah Microsoft could never conceivably develop an extensible source available IDE people love so much they even fork to build $3B companies on the scraps of. absolutely alien!
Androider 1y ago
I use Cursor in anger every day. The core idea behind Cursor is genuinely smart. But the execution is like the classic "unfinished horse" meme [0]. Microsoft provides the editor base, foundation models provide the smarts, and Cursor provides some, in my experience, extremely buggy context management features. There is no moat. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unfinished-horse-drawing-flaming-horse-rating https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unfinished-horse-drawing-flam...
hobo_mark 1y ago
I have tried (stopped a couple months ago). The Python extensions broke all the time while they manually patched around the latest MS release a few days later. Syntax highlighting glitched every other day requiring a full reload. Remote dev via SSH or tunnels also randomly stopped working. Liveshare... Essentially they do not own the platform their core product is built on. Maybe it's fine if you only do local development in other languages (Javascript?), but I completely swore it off.
1y ago

doix 1y ago

> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. I agree with the first part, I'm much less optimistic about the second part. I suspect they will create something that is worse, but cheaper if you already pay for Github/Office 365/whatever. Then many large enterprises will switch to save money whilst the engineers complain, just like with Teams.

preciousoo 1y ago
If the VS Code team are delivering the product, I have some amount of trust. If it’s the VS team, good luck to everyone involved
- deburo 1y ago
  Indeed, Copilot within Visual Studio is nowhere close as good as Copilot within VSCode, and even that is still worse than Cursor in my experience.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  VSCode is still miles behind for .NET and C++ tooling, have a bit of fate on VS team.
  - preciousoo 1y ago
    What’s the use of being miles ahead if you’re traveling in the wrong direction?
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Doesn't look like, given Windows market share.
      - troupo 1y ago
        Not just Windows. I find .net a better choice for backend/microservices than Java, for example

Szpadel 1y ago

For someone that never used windsurf, what features does it have that GitHub copilot does not? Reading their webpages I didn't spot any "killer feature" that would convince me to switch. I always felt that cursor and windsurf should be just extension to vscode instead of a fork. Was there some missing functionality is vscode that was missing? Is it still missing? There are some extensions that work in this way and allow to use multiple implementations depending on task at hand without any long term commitment. I feel like such fragmentation is by artificial just to lock users in single ecosystem.

jstummbillig 1y ago
It can write a lot of code, that works, better than vscode can (right now). It's in a lot of ways the OpenAI story itself: Can they keep an edge? Or is there at least something that will keep people from just switching product? Who knows. People have opinions, of course. OpenAIs opinion (which should reasonably count for something, them being the current AI-as-a-product leader) is worth $3B as of today.
- mliker 1y ago
  Windsurf works well with Claude and Gemini models, so if OpenAI forces Windsurf users to only use OpenAI models, then it wouldn't be as useful.
  - throwup238 1y ago
    I doubt they'll restrict it to their own models. The amount of business intel they'd get on the coding performance of competing models would be invaluable.
  - jonny_eh 1y ago
    They'll make ChatGPT the default, and defaults are powerful.
ZeroTalent 1y ago
It's better at coding, but they are essentially paying for users. I would also argue that the product could be built over two weekends with a small team. They offer some groundbreaking solutions, but since we know that they work and how, it's easy to replicate them. That also means they have significant talent there. Hence, they are also buying the employees. The code base itself is basically worth nothing, in my opinion.

arresin 1y ago

Copilot owns the platform, had an amazing head start and yet still is the worst option available. I don’t mean to be harsh but this was a titanic fumble.

beardedwizard 1y ago
GitHub has been failing upward for more than 5 years. They could have totally dominated software development and security - failed. Could have been the undisputed champion of code hosting - failed. Should have dominated development co-pilots - failed. I actually find it a little reassuring that they can't seem to get out of their own way.
- stevage 1y ago
  They're not the champion of code hosting?
  - MassiveQuasar 1y ago
    They were before they got acquired by Microsoft. The fact that they are is not the results of the Microsoft takeover.
    - stevage 1y ago
      Then I don't understand the inclusion in the list above.
  - beardedwizard 1y ago
    It's a close call - I make this based on the fact that GitHub is viewed as an anti-choice by some in the community, a huge change from the "you don't use GitHub?!?!" energy they had pre-acquisition. The MS acquisition traded the developer community to briefly appeal to enterprises, then quickly let both down.
    - ctkhn 1y ago

bigbinary 1y ago

These are investment plays a company makes when holding too much money, and not a smart move this early in the technology imo Buying competition while everyone’s still fighting might straddle you with a lame horse

dist-epoch 1y ago

Cursor ($9 bil) has a higher valuation than JetBrains ($7 bil). Think about that.

mrweasel 1y ago
Tells me that the markets ability to sensibly valuate companies is pretty messed up.
- singularity2001 1y ago
  or intellij is beyond its peak while cursor is just on the rise
  - slt2021 1y ago
    this. valuation is the discounted cash flow of expected future cash flows, not the past successes
- xnx 1y ago
  These aren't public companies, so the values are mostly made up.
cellis 1y ago
I never did like JetBrains primary product, IntelliJ. It felt clunky even compared to Eclipse for Java, let alone VSCode for … everything. DataGrip is the lone standout imo, but as of the last update I paid for, it didn’t have even basic copilot
rchaud 1y ago
Non-public numbers may as well be pulled out of thin air. WeWork was a $50bn company according to its VC bagholders, and that was marked down by 80% once they released their books to the general public.
aledalgrande 1y ago
What did OpenAI buy for $3B? That's what I'm wondering.

marricks 1y ago

Wow, folks almost had me convinced MS turned a new leaf 5 years ago. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: embrace, extend, extinguish.

pjmlp 1y ago
Nah, folks keep giving human behaviours to big corporations instead of understanding everyone is in the game for the shareholders.
- aero142 1y ago
  If a company can align it's business model with user goals, then it can work in the long run. Apple has somewhat aligned it's integrated hardware sales business model with user privacy. Google and Meta are advertising companies and capturing user data and attention will always drive the business.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Apple does ads as well, it just keeps all metadata to themselves.
    - marricks 1y ago
      Yes, but it's not a meaningful part of their revenue unlike Google where it's' their entire revenue. They are very different companies in structure and it certainly is a "pick your poison" but it's completely stupid to act like they're the same on this front. Apple is better on user privacy ...unless you care about state actors, which you should, in which case your data is the US government's either way.
tomnipotent 1y ago
Do you consider the Microsoft-managed plug-in marketplace and infrastructure to be a private or public resource? From my understanding Microsoft has never been vague on the position that the plugin marketplace is exclusive to the official VS Code distribution, and the TOS specifically forbids forks from doing so. Cursor and other forks have decided to circumvent this, some even going so far as to use proxies to bypass restrictions. I'm not convinced Microsoft owes other billion dollar companies free access to a product they've built, curated, and supported for over a decade. Plug-in authors are not restricted from publishing their products on competing marketplaces.

m3kw9 1y ago

Microsoft is slow af for a company that size. Maybe yeah, they are slow because of that size. Don’t bet on them out accelerating a startup, the evidence so far in the past year is that they will stay a year behind every year

leonidasv 1y ago

The thing is: we should not need standalone editors just to use AI coding agents. They could be just plugins, but Microsoft does not want to bend the plugin API enough for that. Windsurf has a "plugin edition" for JetBrains IDEs that works really, really well[0] (they also have a VSCode plugin[1] but it's lacking in comparison). However, given that JetBrains also have their own AI offering[2], I'm not sure how long that will last too... [0] https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/20540-windsurf-plugin-formerly-codeium-for-python-js-java-go-- https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/20540-windsurf-plugin-f... [1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium.codeium https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Codeium.... [2] https://www.jetbrains.com/ai/ https://www.jetbrains.com/ai/

owendarko 1y ago
There are already a bunch of open source, free, and popular "AI coding agent" extensions for VS Code: 1) Cline (1.4mil downloads) 2) Roo Code (a fork of Cline, 450k downloads) Still a drop in the bucket compared to Cursor in terms of # of users, but they're growing pretty fast. Disclaimer: I maintain Kilo Code, which competes with 1) and 2) so I'm pretty familiar with this space/the growth patterns.
- htrp 1y ago
  How are you differentiating from the cline/roo's of the world?
  - boleary-gl 1y ago
    Our plan is to be a superset of Cline and Roo's features (we already have all the major features from both) [0] We also have our own provider, which means no need to bring your own API keys (you can if you like, but it is batteries included by default) and we're not charging anything on top of the API pricing. Instead of monetizing on individual developers, we want it to be free for them and make money eventually off enterprise contracts [1] [0]: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-building-a-superset https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-building-a-supe... [1]: https://kilocode.ai https://kilocode.ai

aravindputrevu 1y ago

I completely disagree and feel MS would never do it. Not a MS Employee, but they have moved on from such battles. They should have restricted the Marketplace several years ago, however, they are doing it now. With C++, they are part of MFC's, they are the legal owners, not like Google vs Oracle in case of Java. Lastly, with AI Code IDEs I think yes, there is a case, the need for IDE might be very less. Like a steering on a self driving car.

pjmlp 1y ago
ISO C++ has nothing to do with MFC.
wkat4242 1y ago
Why should they have restricted the marketplace? It's really annoying imo that they lock vs codium out of the more useful plugins like the SSH remote one. However luckily most only take a setting or two to enable anyway.

behnamoh 1y ago

> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. Microsoft software quality has gone downhill recently, and I'm not going to bet on them delivering something more polished than WS and Cursor here. Side: all images on Microsoft websites are low resolution! it's like they don't even check their own website.

moi2388 1y ago
30% of their code is now written with AI. Their “programmers” are more busy with making blogs and videos than functioning tests or technical documentation, and they start using JavaScript and Python for everything. I’m not surprised their quality went to shit. There are some pearls left, C# in general is pretty good, and Aspire is becoming quite neat. The latter I think mainly because David Fowler is just a great developer
- T0Bi 1y ago
  /s? Because if you're referencing to a headline (without reading the article) that was on H a couple of days ago, it stated that 20-30% of the code in the repos was written by software. Software != AI To quote wongarsu in the same post: "Considering that most of their software has been developed for decades and AI assistants have only started becoming useful in the last ~4 years it would be very surprising if 30% of their code is AI written. I doubt they even touched 30% of their code in the last 4 years. But what is perfectly plausible is that 30% of their code is written by code generators. Microsoft has a lot of interface code. All the windows DLLs that are just thin syscall interfaces, the COM and OLE interfaces in their office suite and everywhere else, whatever Office uses nowadays for interoperability to allow you to embed content of one product in another, whatever APIs their online products use, etc. In the leaked Windows XP source code it can be difficult to find the actual source code in between the boilerplate files containing repeated definitions, and in the decades since then the world has only leaned more into code generation." Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43841868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43841868

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mliker 1y ago

Agreed. Especially with tools like Claude Code, which can get better over time and remove the need to use Windsurf and Cursor.

tough 1y ago

Github Copilot is pretty much the same UI as cursor on vscode already

cheema33 1y ago
UI may be close. Functionality is very very different. Copilot is $10/month. Cursor is $20/month. I canceled my Copilot subscription after 2 months of using both. Compares to competition, Copilot has been garbage for quite some time.
- kasey_junk 1y ago
  I’d love to know what specifically is better about cursor in your opinion? I’ve used both and have a hard time even listing a different feature.

dontlikeyoueith 1y ago

> Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. Probably. > And deliver them with far greater stability and polish That seems ... overly optimistic given MS's history.

Onavo 1y ago
Their devtools team is surprisingly competent when they choose to be. Pre-2015, people used Sublime Text, Atom, Textmate, Notepad++, Light Table, Brackets, Emacs/Vim, Intellij. VS code single handedly crushed all of them with code completion and language servers that require zero configuration. Emacs/Vim lost share, Jetbrains (and also Eclipse) were forced to release their own "lightweight" code editors, and everybody else became mostly irrelevant (except perhaps Sublime Text since it has the best native performance out of all editors).
- no_wizard 1y ago
  I would contend that JetBrains has only grown even with VS Code around. They're still more than viable, support things on a near similar cadence (and even in some cases, faster and/or better) than VS Code gets support for it. I agree with the rest, they've all mostly lost market share or completely no longer exist due to VS Code, but not IntelliJ, that platform is going really strong. Though no doubt, VS Code has pushed JetBrains to rethink some things, and be better in general.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    It’s hard to compete with free when free is backed by lot of money.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      Free doesn't matter here. JetBrains is an established toolset that people pay for. They've already been competing with free, and free didn't put them out of business. In some ways, free likely made business better than ever (I know alot of devs that started with VS Code and moved to JetBrains for various reasons) They can have all the money in the world and it doesn't mean much in this context. For while Microsoft is going to invest heavily in a Cursor / Windsurf like product and likely do alot to ship it in their editors - likely with exclusions or lag times between updates on other platforms - there's zero reason for Google to do this for example, when they could sell through Gemini for Code as an extension across all editors. I don't see JetBrains having issues because of AI tooling, for most of these companies, its a boon to be on the JetBrains platform. Especially because JetBrains has lots of enterprise customers who would naturally be very interested in buying AI tooling for their developers. Its a natural market

dmitrygr 1y ago

> Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets Care to place a bet?

sanderjd 1y ago

I'm frankly very skeptical of your last paragraph. That's not at all what seems useful to me. But we'll see! But I agree with you about the first part, and I think it's awesome for me as a user that all this competition to build a matter mousetrap is happening right now! I'm not as certain as you are that Microsoft will end up building a better version. It's definitely one of the likely outcomes. But it's also totally plausible that Cursor or Windsurf can win the race, even if they need to replace every single one of the MS extensions and entirely diverge the core IDE from upstream. These products are well capitalized and it's just not that hard to build the core pieces of an IDE.

999900000999 1y ago

>Ultimately, the future isn't about a smarter editor, it's about a smarter teammate. Tools like GitHub Copilot or future agents will handle entire engineering tickets: generating PRs with tests, taking feedback, and iterating like a real collaborator. I think a few options for this already exist, but honestly they don't go far enough. I want something like an AI scrum master, for hyper agile teams, that can task out smaller tickets to AI sub agents. I would integrate this thing in with something like an AI powered Jira. Two arguments exists. 1. I need to take about 6 months off and start building this now, even if I don't know exactly how I'll get it done. Between a combination of vibe coding and maybe a bit of outsourced work ( looking at Eastern Europe), I could get this done with my personal funds. 2. To do this properly would probably require tens of millions of dollars. I'll probably burn myself out trying to do it solo without ultimately getting to a sellable product. The biggest issue here is to actually scale I would need to either have users bring their own LLM keys or have tens of thousands to spend on LLM tokens.

AlwaysRock 1y ago

I was a little late to jump on the cursor bandwagon but finally downloaded it because i liked the LLM chat interface in the sidebar. By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM chat interface in the sidebar. Yes Cursor had a bit better auto complete and maybe a few other things but it wasnt good enough that it was worth paying for. But I'm glad OpenAI is getting into the tooling space in this way. I cant wait to use all the cool features they build after VSCode rips them off.

szundi 1y ago
[dead]
cheema33 1y ago
> By the time my free trial ran out, VSCode had added a LLM chat interface in the sidebar. I am guessing you are talking about GitHub Copilot when you say VSCode. GitHub Copilot is far far inferior product when compared to Cursor, Windsurf or Augment Code. Most people who try almost any Copilot alternative for a reasonable amount of time end up canceling their Copilot subscription. I did, after two months of using both.
- RobinL 1y ago
  How long ago was that? 6 months ago I switched from VS Code to Cursor, which at the time was FAR superior to Copilot. Around a month ago I switched back to VS Code, and found there's not much difference any more. Autocomplete in VS Code is still less good, but the agent mode in VS Code feels pretty similar to Cursor's (albeit a little slower, perhaps). To be honest I think both are quite limited by context length (in that they try to limit the context they send to the LLM and hence cost), and so I find myself using Gemini 2.5 in AI studio with the 1m context length, and asking it to generate instructions for Copilot (which seems to work pretty well)
  - AlwaysRock 1y ago
    Yup. I found cursor to be better but not good enough that it really made that much of a difference in my actual day to day.

FuckButtons 1y ago

I think you’re being overoptimistic about the skill ceiling that this generation of Ai is likely to have.

DanHulton 1y ago
Yeah. Every time I see entirely unfounded claims like that, I remember that I've been seeing them for literal years now. While there have definitely been improvements in AI capability, they have largely been very marginal, while the claimed "will handle entire engineering tickets" capability requires huge leaps in capability and reliability that _we just have not seen evidence for._ Mentally, I'm replacing claims like this with "it will do magic!" and I think I'm just about as likely to be correct.
joshwcomeau 1y ago
++. Was surprised I had to scroll so far to find someone saying this!

3abiton 1y ago

This is the right take, but long term. Short term, it's just about investor hype. Cursor is becoming more mainstream and if OpenAI falls behind on this, they'll be losing momentum. But yes, the fields moves so fast, it'll be totally different in a year or 2. Does anyone recall langchain?

re5i5tor 1y ago

I have to admit skepticism re: “far greater stability and polish” from MS

maccard 1y ago

cft 1y ago

I am slightly more optimistic, because the API may not be fully centralized- there may be more than one foundational AI company in the end. Like WhatsApp exists because there's the iOS/Android duopoly, an agent-neutral IDE from a non-foundational company without its own API aspirations may continue to exist

gexos 1y ago

[flagged]

matheusmoreira 1y ago
> If they start walling off features like TypeScript 7.0 from forks, the open source pushback will be fierce—and that could backfire hard. Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft? Linux managed to do it but Linux is the biggest, most successful free software project there is. Firefox and its forks are a better example. If Mozilla stopped working on Firefox, the forks would be pretty much dead in the water: they simply do not have the man power necessary to maintain a modern browser.
- cwkoss 1y ago
  Does microsoft have the wisdom to predict where this line of technology is headed, and/or the agility to course correct when their predictions don't quite hit the mark? Cursor blows copilot out of the water in my experience. Man power clearly isn't the most decisive factor in this battle.
  - rockwotj 1y ago
    Copilot is limited to 64k context window. Even if the underlying model is gemini with 20x that. It’s gotta be a major reason copilot is so bad in comparison. They are all the same sets of models under the hood
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mathgeek 1y ago
  > Do they have the man power to compete with Microsoft? There are a fair number of examples where smaller companies and/or open source beat Microsoft's entrenched products. Usually a key indicator is that MS's products stagnate (which doesn't yet appear to be happening currently).
- horns4lyfe 1y ago

prpl 1y ago

I view this as an another step in the push/pull between local things, remote things, local things remotely, thin clients, network partitioning, cloud, zero trust, etc... The last cycle I remember of this IMO is iPython -> Jupyterhub/Jupyterlab. Of course, iPython has existed for a long time, though that change was made because data was too big to analyze locally and it turns out it was more convenient to centrally manage kernels/images/libraries for convenience. MCP servers and Cursor/Windsurf changed that a bit, but it will end up centralized again at some point (or at least aggregated, if it's not already?). People are passing around lists of interesting MCP servers now, and that will be out of fashion in less than 12 months.

hnlurker22 1y ago

I just abandoned Windsurf because I found copy/pasting code with ChatGPT's web interface significantly better in terms of results.

jonplackett 1y ago
I’m still just copying and pasting. Was considering trying it. Is it really not any better?
- hnlurker22 1y ago
  It wasn't any better for me. It deleted all my code. The answers were like it was a completely different model. I used Windsurf once and never opened it again

dughnut 1y ago

“And will deliver them with far greater stability and polish” Stable and polished are not words that ever came to my mind while using any Microsoft product.

rglover 1y ago

If Microsoft were smart, they'd just acquire Cline (or fork it), make it an official VSCode feature and be done with it. It smokes Cursor and Windsurf and it's a free plugin you can just install in un-forked VSCode.