3 ms·

There's a small but seemingly tireless brigade of "you're not actually moving faster, you're just fooling yourself" pundits on this site that feel compelled to

There's a small but seemingly tireless brigade of "you're not actually moving faster, you're just fooling yourself" pundits on this site that feel compelled to chime in every time someone mentions that they get any benefit from AI coding tools. I'm just not going to engage with them anymore. That said... I jumped to a few random moments in your video and had an "oh my god" reaction because you really were not kidding when you said that you were pasting code. I'm pretty much begging you to install and use Cursor. Whatever boost you're getting from your current workflow, you will see triple through use of their Agent/Plan/Debug modes, especially when using Opus 4.5. I promise you: it's a before electricity vs after electricity scenario. I'm actually excited for you. A lot of folks will tell you to use Claude Code. I personally find that it doesn't make sense for the sorts of projects I work on; I would 100% start with Cursor either way.

SirensOfTitan 10mo ago
Can you actually provide any proof, even top-line stats from GitHub or other software forges that show the productivity boost you’re claiming? It’s not up to the skeptics to prove this tech doesn’t work, it’s up to the proponents to show it does and does so with a similar effect size as cigarettes cause lung cancer. There are a tremendous amount of LLM productivity stans on HN but the plural of anecdote is not data. Certainly these tools are useful, but the extent to which they are useful today is not nearly as open and shut as you and others would claim. I’d say that these tools make me 5% more productive on a code base I know well. I’m totally open to opposing evidence that isn’t just anecdote
- ghthor 10mo ago
  I think it’s pretty obvious that is the OP automates this manual part of their workflow that it will improve their iteration speed. The thread root is just saying stop copy and pasting and use the built in tooling to communicate with the LLM apis
  - Klonoar 10mo ago
    They aren’t responding to thread roots extended comment, just the first part about the tone and rhetoric of AI proponents. Your comment isnt really a response to anything in their comment.
judahmeek 10mo ago
"it doesn't make sense" is an odd statement to make for choosing Claude Code vs Cursor. Would you be willing to go into more detail about that claim?
- peteforde 10mo ago
  Happy to! CC seems best suited to situations where one or both of the following are true: - presence of CI infrastructure - the ability for the agent to run/test outputs from the run loop If you're primarily working on embedded hardware, human-in-the-loop is not optional. In real terms, I am the CI infrastructure. Also, working on hardware means that I am often discussing the circuit with the LLM in a much more collaborative way than what most folks seem to do with CC requirements. There are MCP servers for KiCAD but they don't seem to do more than integrate with BOM management. The LLMs understand EE better than many engineers do, but they can only understand my circuit (and the decisions embedded in it) as well as I can explain/screencap it to them. The SDK and tooling for the MCUs also just makes an IDE with extensions a much more ergonomic fit than trying to do everything through CLI command switches.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- peteforde 9mo ago
  BTW: it's a statement, not a claim. The framing of your question as though I might possibly be hallucinating my own situation might be correlated to your lack of reply.
  - judahmeek 9mo ago
    AFAIK, all statements are claims. I didn't reply because I haven't had available energy to properly analyze your reply. At a glance, your reply does seem completely reasonable, which is why I upvoted it.
satvikpendem 10mo ago
Isn't Claude Code the same as Cursor agent mode? I really don't get why anyone would want to lock yourself to one LLM creator in the former vs having all the LLMs in the latter. How do you stop yourself from bursting through the quota with Opus? That's my biggest worry and it keeps me from using it over Sonnet in my Cursor.
- peteforde 10mo ago
  Honestly, it depends on what you mean by "the same as". Both are (in my case, at least) running Opus 4.5 instances. After that, it's like using a CNC or a shop full of hand tools. They are both great, and people who know one often know both. The process is wildly different, however. Not busting my quota is simply not my top priority. I'm on their $200/month plan and I have it locked to a $1000/month overage limit, though the most I've ever gone through using it every day, all day is about $700. That probably sounds like a lot if you're optimizing for a $20/month token budget, but it's budgeted for. That $10-12k/year is excellent value for the silly amount of functionality that I've been able to create. Sonnet is a really good LLM, and you can build great things with it. However, if you're using this for serious work, IMO you probably want to use the most productive tools available. Opus 4.1 was, to be real, punishingly expensive. It made me sweat. Thank goodness that Opus 4.5 is somehow both much better and much cheaper.
  - satvikpendem 10mo ago
    What do you see as the difference between Claude Code and Cursor agent mode, since you said Claude Code doesn't work for your type of project so I'm curious why that is. Edit, I see you answered this in another response, thanks.
    - peteforde 9mo ago
      While I am vaguely aware that CC has started to move past its CLI-first roots, I still think of it as a process that you do in a terminal window vs something you do in an IDE like VSCode or Cursor. I don't have any interest in yucking anyone's yum, but for me, I find working in and IDE to be vastly more productive than trying to remember dozens of vim and tmux shortcuts.

SirensOfTitan 10mo ago

Can you actually provide any proof, even top-line stats from GitHub or other software forges that show the productivity boost you’re claiming? It’s not up to the skeptics to prove this tech doesn’t work, it’s up to the proponents to show it does and does so with a similar effect size as cigarettes cause lung cancer. There are a tremendous amount of LLM productivity stans on HN but the plural of anecdote is not data. Certainly these tools are useful, but the extent to which they are useful today is not nearly as open and shut as you and others would claim. I’d say that these tools make me 5% more productive on a code base I know well. I’m totally open to opposing evidence that isn’t just anecdote

ghthor 10mo ago
I think it’s pretty obvious that is the OP automates this manual part of their workflow that it will improve their iteration speed. The thread root is just saying stop copy and pasting and use the built in tooling to communicate with the LLM apis
- Klonoar 10mo ago
  They aren’t responding to thread roots extended comment, just the first part about the tone and rhetoric of AI proponents. Your comment isnt really a response to anything in their comment.

judahmeek 10mo ago

"it doesn't make sense" is an odd statement to make for choosing Claude Code vs Cursor. Would you be willing to go into more detail about that claim?

peteforde 10mo ago
Happy to! CC seems best suited to situations where one or both of the following are true: - presence of CI infrastructure - the ability for the agent to run/test outputs from the run loop If you're primarily working on embedded hardware, human-in-the-loop is not optional. In real terms, I am the CI infrastructure. Also, working on hardware means that I am often discussing the circuit with the LLM in a much more collaborative way than what most folks seem to do with CC requirements. There are MCP servers for KiCAD but they don't seem to do more than integrate with BOM management. The LLMs understand EE better than many engineers do, but they can only understand my circuit (and the decisions embedded in it) as well as I can explain/screencap it to them. The SDK and tooling for the MCUs also just makes an IDE with extensions a much more ergonomic fit than trying to do everything through CLI command switches.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
peteforde 9mo ago
BTW: it's a statement, not a claim. The framing of your question as though I might possibly be hallucinating my own situation might be correlated to your lack of reply.
- judahmeek 9mo ago
  AFAIK, all statements are claims. I didn't reply because I haven't had available energy to properly analyze your reply. At a glance, your reply does seem completely reasonable, which is why I upvoted it.

satvikpendem 10mo ago

Isn't Claude Code the same as Cursor agent mode? I really don't get why anyone would want to lock yourself to one LLM creator in the former vs having all the LLMs in the latter. How do you stop yourself from bursting through the quota with Opus? That's my biggest worry and it keeps me from using it over Sonnet in my Cursor.

peteforde 10mo ago
Honestly, it depends on what you mean by "the same as". Both are (in my case, at least) running Opus 4.5 instances. After that, it's like using a CNC or a shop full of hand tools. They are both great, and people who know one often know both. The process is wildly different, however. Not busting my quota is simply not my top priority. I'm on their $200/month plan and I have it locked to a $1000/month overage limit, though the most I've ever gone through using it every day, all day is about $700. That probably sounds like a lot if you're optimizing for a $20/month token budget, but it's budgeted for. That $10-12k/year is excellent value for the silly amount of functionality that I've been able to create. Sonnet is a really good LLM, and you can build great things with it. However, if you're using this for serious work, IMO you probably want to use the most productive tools available. Opus 4.1 was, to be real, punishingly expensive. It made me sweat. Thank goodness that Opus 4.5 is somehow both much better and much cheaper.
- satvikpendem 10mo ago
  What do you see as the difference between Claude Code and Cursor agent mode, since you said Claude Code doesn't work for your type of project so I'm curious why that is. Edit, I see you answered this in another response, thanks.
  - peteforde 9mo ago
    While I am vaguely aware that CC has started to move past its CLI-first roots, I still think of it as a process that you do in a terminal window vs something you do in an IDE like VSCode or Cursor. I don't have any interest in yucking anyone's yum, but for me, I find working in and IDE to be vastly more productive than trying to remember dozens of vim and tmux shortcuts.