5 ms·

Cursor is an interesting case study on the wrapper vs. core debate. They were the first big success story in the coding space, enjoyed first mover advantages, a

Cursor is an interesting case study on the wrapper vs. core debate. They were the first big success story in the coding space, enjoyed first mover advantages, and sweetheart deals with volume tokens from providers. Now that all the providers have moved towards in-housing their coding solutions, the sweetheart deals are gone. And the wrapper goes back to "at cost" usage. Which, on paper should be less value / $ than any of the tiers offered by the providers themselves. Whatever data they collected, and whatever investments they made in core tech remains to be seen. And it's a question of making use of that data. We can see that it is highly valuable for providers (as they all subsidise usage to an extent). Goog is offering lots of stuff for free, presumably to collect data. One interesting distinction is on cursor vs. windsurf. Windsurf actually developed some internal models (either pre-trained or post-trained I don't know, but probably doesn't matter much) swe1 and swe1-lite that are actually pretty good on their own. I don't think cursor has done that, beyond their tab-next-prediction model. A clue, perhaps. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds 2-5 years from now.

jerpint 1y ago
Cursor developed their own tab models IIRC
- fullstackwife 1y ago
  but Gemini is perfect for tab completion, and the price for Gemini will be always lower
- tom_m 1y ago
  There's is absolutely nothing that Cursor has that anyone else can't easily and doesn't already. In fact better. Open-source solutions already outpace Cursor. The difference is open-source doesn't exactly have a giant marketing budget. So most people haven't caught on yet, but they will.
  - mahmoudimus 1y ago
    Who is better for that tab completion?
- rubslopes 1y ago
  I think they bought it for SuperMaven.
bravesoul2 1y ago
I saw an ad today OpenAI offering free AI interior design mock-up. Not sure if it a specific feature or just way to use image generation but either way they are commoditizing the thin wrappers.
bGl2YW5j 1y ago
I’m interested if anyone here knows what exactly Cursor has built? My limited understanding is that they’ve done nothing but fork VS code and add a chat window and AI-integrated editing tools.
- stavros 1y ago
  Google has done nothing but make another search engine, Apple has done nothing but make another phone, Ferrari has done nothing but make another car, etc.
  - roxolotl 1y ago
    Eh that’s not quite fair. Google isn’t wrapping a search engine. Apple isn’t selling slightly optimized versions of other manufacturers’ phones. Cursor is a solid tool but as best I can tell there’s not a ton there.
    - stavros 1y ago
      They have their own models, though, and their code completion is basically magic. It's not just a UI around GPT.
  - tom_m 1y ago
    The search engine was just a tool for their real product. Ads. Now, AI. They're so unconcerned about search that they are replacing it with Gemini answers.
- tom_m 1y ago
  Basically...but, no, I mean they have some features that provide UX around prompting an LLM and then taking the output and using it to edit files for you. It's a "quality of life" or productivity tool. It's useful and has SOME value. Just not enough unfortunately. This is history repeating itself. How could a company that raised so much money possibly compete with another that has the same ... arguably better ... product for less? Marketing budget? Hype? First to market? Sure. Absolutely. All those things do fade though. We've seen this movie before. Remember Sublime Text? Remember what happened when Atom and VS Code came along? Fortunately Sublime Text didn't over raise (if they raised anything at all, I can't remember). Point is, people catch on and save money if they can. So they will do the same with Cursor. Use open source editors that have the same features...better ones even. I'll argue that Roo Code is much much better than Cursor. I even like Windsurf better to be honest, but I wouldn't pay for either. I'll support open-source and save my money to pay the LLM. Cursor is about to go the way of Sublime Text or Notepad++. Might keep some cult following, but it's market share will drop off a cliff. It's ok. Their investors don't care! This was all to get people to use LLMs more. Their investors are fine with the sacrifice. That's all it ever was.
avianlyric 1y ago
I think LLM agents have completely broken the business model that companies like Cursor were founded on. Early on Cursor added value by finding clever to integrate LLM into an IDE, which would allow single shot output of an LLM to produce something useful, and do so quickly. That required a fair bit of engineering to make happen reliably. But LLM agents completely break that. The moment people realised that rather than trying to bend our tools to work within the limits of an LLM, we could instead just make LLM “self-prompt” their way to better outputs, Cursors model stopped being viable. It’s another classic case of the AI “Bitter Lesson”[0] being learned. Throwing more data, and more compute at AI produces faster, better progress, than careful methodical engineering. [0] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
- xtracto 1y ago
  I think I might be missing something. I use Cursor daily as part of my development process and it feels like magic. I've tried Aider and other agentic options and its amazingly clunky. Maybe I'm looking at the "apple vs linux" effect: I'm the apple user that just expect things to work out of the box, and although there are way better alternatives, the integration is worse.
  - kristopolous 1y ago
    The reality is we write different kinds of software, in different roles, using different workflows, with different priorities and those variations matter here as much as they do in choosing any other stack of organization and productivity tools.
tom_m 1y ago
They built nothing that someone else couldn't...and didn't. They got nothing. This is also a bit of foreshadowing for all SaaS by the way. Remember, nothing prevents anyone from simply vibe coding anything they see out there in the future. It turns the value of all software to near $0. Cursor will go under. They'll be acquired for cheap (making more headlines, good press!), go bankrupt, or completely change their business into something else and undergo major restructuring. The point of Cursor is NOT to be a profitable ai code editor business. Look at the investors. Thrive dumped over $9B, using that $9B to advertise, market, and sell the product and services offered by the other companies they invest in -- the LLMs. At the end of the day, that's where the money flows. In fact, none of the investors care one bit of Cursor survives. It's served its purpose. It was the "freebie" that people give out, the appetizer, for something bigger.

jerpint 1y ago

Cursor developed their own tab models IIRC

fullstackwife 1y ago
but Gemini is perfect for tab completion, and the price for Gemini will be always lower
tom_m 1y ago
There's is absolutely nothing that Cursor has that anyone else can't easily and doesn't already. In fact better. Open-source solutions already outpace Cursor. The difference is open-source doesn't exactly have a giant marketing budget. So most people haven't caught on yet, but they will.
- mahmoudimus 1y ago
  Who is better for that tab completion?
rubslopes 1y ago
I think they bought it for SuperMaven.

bravesoul2 1y ago

I saw an ad today OpenAI offering free AI interior design mock-up. Not sure if it a specific feature or just way to use image generation but either way they are commoditizing the thin wrappers.

bGl2YW5j 1y ago

I’m interested if anyone here knows what exactly Cursor has built? My limited understanding is that they’ve done nothing but fork VS code and add a chat window and AI-integrated editing tools.

stavros 1y ago
Google has done nothing but make another search engine, Apple has done nothing but make another phone, Ferrari has done nothing but make another car, etc.
- roxolotl 1y ago
  Eh that’s not quite fair. Google isn’t wrapping a search engine. Apple isn’t selling slightly optimized versions of other manufacturers’ phones. Cursor is a solid tool but as best I can tell there’s not a ton there.
  - stavros 1y ago
    They have their own models, though, and their code completion is basically magic. It's not just a UI around GPT.
- tom_m 1y ago
  The search engine was just a tool for their real product. Ads. Now, AI. They're so unconcerned about search that they are replacing it with Gemini answers.
tom_m 1y ago
Basically...but, no, I mean they have some features that provide UX around prompting an LLM and then taking the output and using it to edit files for you. It's a "quality of life" or productivity tool. It's useful and has SOME value. Just not enough unfortunately. This is history repeating itself. How could a company that raised so much money possibly compete with another that has the same ... arguably better ... product for less? Marketing budget? Hype? First to market? Sure. Absolutely. All those things do fade though. We've seen this movie before. Remember Sublime Text? Remember what happened when Atom and VS Code came along? Fortunately Sublime Text didn't over raise (if they raised anything at all, I can't remember). Point is, people catch on and save money if they can. So they will do the same with Cursor. Use open source editors that have the same features...better ones even. I'll argue that Roo Code is much much better than Cursor. I even like Windsurf better to be honest, but I wouldn't pay for either. I'll support open-source and save my money to pay the LLM. Cursor is about to go the way of Sublime Text or Notepad++. Might keep some cult following, but it's market share will drop off a cliff. It's ok. Their investors don't care! This was all to get people to use LLMs more. Their investors are fine with the sacrifice. That's all it ever was.

avianlyric 1y ago

I think LLM agents have completely broken the business model that companies like Cursor were founded on. Early on Cursor added value by finding clever to integrate LLM into an IDE, which would allow single shot output of an LLM to produce something useful, and do so quickly. That required a fair bit of engineering to make happen reliably. But LLM agents completely break that. The moment people realised that rather than trying to bend our tools to work within the limits of an LLM, we could instead just make LLM “self-prompt” their way to better outputs, Cursors model stopped being viable. It’s another classic case of the AI “Bitter Lesson”[0] being learned. Throwing more data, and more compute at AI produces faster, better progress, than careful methodical engineering. [0] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

xtracto 1y ago
I think I might be missing something. I use Cursor daily as part of my development process and it feels like magic. I've tried Aider and other agentic options and its amazingly clunky. Maybe I'm looking at the "apple vs linux" effect: I'm the apple user that just expect things to work out of the box, and although there are way better alternatives, the integration is worse.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  The reality is we write different kinds of software, in different roles, using different workflows, with different priorities and those variations matter here as much as they do in choosing any other stack of organization and productivity tools.

tom_m 1y ago

They built nothing that someone else couldn't...and didn't. They got nothing. This is also a bit of foreshadowing for all SaaS by the way. Remember, nothing prevents anyone from simply vibe coding anything they see out there in the future. It turns the value of all software to near $0. Cursor will go under. They'll be acquired for cheap (making more headlines, good press!), go bankrupt, or completely change their business into something else and undergo major restructuring. The point of Cursor is NOT to be a profitable ai code editor business. Look at the investors. Thrive dumped over $9B, using that $9B to advertise, market, and sell the product and services offered by the other companies they invest in -- the LLMs. At the end of the day, that's where the money flows. In fact, none of the investors care one bit of Cursor survives. It's served its purpose. It was the "freebie" that people give out, the appetizer, for something bigger.