4 ms·

> Really impressive how they've made this jump from being called the vscode fork with no moat just a couple of months ago. Impressive, yes. But they still don'

> Really impressive how they've made this jump from being called the vscode fork with no moat just a couple of months ago. Impressive, yes. But they still don't have a moat...

kkukshtel 5mo ago
And its still just a vscode fork
- icemelt8 5mo ago
  Cursor 3 is a complete rewrite, its no longer a fork.
  - gkbrk 5mo ago
    It's still a VSCode fork. Even Cursor's own About window tells you it's VSCode. Cursor Version: 3.4.20 VSCode Version: 1.105.1
  - muhfournik 5mo ago
    I believe the agent view is a complete rewrite, and maybe the other parts but not the editor itself
alach11 5mo ago
Isn't a large user base and the data collected from those users a moat of sorts?
- AussieWog93 5mo ago
  Honestly the data itself is probably worth heaps even in the company itself collapses. Early attention engineering when humans were still in the loop!!!
  - NitpickLawyer 5mo ago
    > Early attention engineering when humans were still in the loop Exactly. Cursor was the first product used by tons of devs on real codebases. Just the signal "acceptance rate" is huge and can't be easily captured w/ synthetic data.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago
  A moat is when you have something other's can't easily get. Every MAG 7 / FAANG company already has more users and more data... That's not a moat. That's traction.
  - wilg 5mo ago
    That's not X. That's Y.
    - DonHopkins 5mo ago
      [flagged]
    - uxcolumbo 5mo ago
      Been a bit out of the loop. What's wrong with using very short sentences like 'That's not X. That's Y.'?
      - arcanemachiner 5mo ago
        Commonly used phrase by LLMs. Gives people slop vibes these days.
        Kiro 5mo ago
        "It's not X, it's Y" is a good way to illustrate a point. Same goes for many other common LLM phrases. It's used because it's effective.
        monsieurbanana 5mo ago
        Huh. I associate it with LinkedIn slop, which is probably 100% ai nowadays but they certainly didn't wait for llms.
  - LinXitoW 5mo ago
    They don't have the same quality and kind of data. For example, Claude Code might have general conversation flow data for implementing feature X, but Cursor has users individual editing actions AND the chat flow. Which line did the user manually edit after the agent did it's thing? What's the commit message (if done manually)? Stuff like that is worth it's weight in gold.
infecto 5mo ago
I am not sure we should dismiss what they have today. Nobody has yet to come close with a full package ide that works well for coding. Is that not a moat? It is easy for my to in my head discount it, thinking that I could build something myself but between autocomplete and their workflow for agent use, it feels like they have some tangible moat emerging.
- chillfox 5mo ago
  Have you tried Zed? I haven’t tried Cursor, so don’t know how they compare, but I like Zed a lot. Anyway, would love to see a comparison from someone who has used a recent version of each.
  - turastory 5mo ago
    A few years ago I tried Zed when it was still pretty early, but eventually settled on Cursor. I gave Zed another shot a few days ago because Cursor’s worktree support still feels pretty weak. In my setup I use multiple agents like Claude Code and Codex, and Zed’s ACP support makes it pretty nice to manage them all as “threads” in one place. Worktree switching also feels much smoother. Overall the experience was pretty good, but the way the agent and editor are integrated still feels a bit lacking, and tab completion is the big one for me. Cursor’s tab completion is still the best I’ve used. So now I’m using both. For work that needs a lot of focus and careful iteration, I use Cursor. For things that are easy to split into worktrees and hand off to agents, I use Zed with Claude/Codex.
    - chillfox 5mo ago
      Interesting, is it that the tab completion is giving better results, or how it works is better?
      - ramses0 5mo ago
        The tab completion is "faster than vim" from a long-time vimmer. It's at the point where a lot of times i'll lead with the comment instead of the code: # now take the list and sort by x.lastName <tab> ...and it'll "do the thing" (w/ type hints, its own comments, etc). Obviously in this very simple, understandable, completely contrived example, it's "trivial" (but 3 years ago would have seemed like magic), but it'll also pick up on "continuation / more of the same" type edits. A comment like `# use random_utility to call the api and only accept matches which supplement addresses that have already been found` will (usually) autocomplete all the gobbledy-gook w.r.t. tokens, URL's, function names, etc. so it's effectively an "automatic omni-complete with simplistic post-processing" Example #2: I was just fixing some vibe-coded slop, where it was taking `click.echo( some_api.whatever_endpoint() )` and the "slop" portion was literally emitting: `str('{ "A": 1, "B": 2 }')` and that function call was emitting it directly. On the command line, I was doing `blah whatever-endpoint --something | jq '.'` and got tired of the JQ thing, so I'm like: "I'll just use `json.dumps(...,indent=2)`", but lo and behold, I'm getting a dumb JSON string literal, not a pretty printed object shape. I start typing `json.loads(` to move from "str()" to "dict()" ... and it autocompletes the whole scenario (on that line), then I move to `def some_other_endpoint` and it basically has that same edit queued up. (ie: it "knows" what i'm about to do). ...so overall, "faster than vim", even with high skill bar for repetition, motion, macros, sed-style edits, etc. You can't beat: "<tab>", especially when it's lightly intelligent (ie: knows when/what/str/int, adapts do different function calls, etc).
jmcqk6 5mo ago
I've been using cursor for over a year for my personal projects. At work, I use Claude Code, and so I've been wondering if I'm missing something in the other agents. Over the last week, I tried out two other agents on my personal projects: dirac and forgecode, after seeing impressive results from both of them on terminal bench. After a good amount of testing, and over $100 in open router spend, I'm back to cursor. I really liked forgecode the best, and it feels better than claude code, but cursor definitely feels best to me. Composer 2.5 is fast and effective, and it makes a huge difference. I was running `forge` with Opus, and it was taking dozens of minutes to do things, and the feedback loop was so slow. The previous version of composer was also much faster, and it makes a difference. Maybe people like context switching, but I prefer to stay focussed on the task in front of me, and I'm reviewing the code carefully. I think that's a pretty good moat. I was ready to end my subscription a week ago, and now I'm back after learning the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence.

> Really impressive how they've made this jump from being called the vscode fork with no moat just a couple of months ago. Impressive, yes. But they still don't have a moat...

kkukshtel 5mo ago

And its still just a vscode fork

icemelt8 5mo ago
Cursor 3 is a complete rewrite, its no longer a fork.
- gkbrk 5mo ago
  It's still a VSCode fork. Even Cursor's own About window tells you it's VSCode. Cursor Version: 3.4.20 VSCode Version: 1.105.1
- muhfournik 5mo ago
  I believe the agent view is a complete rewrite, and maybe the other parts but not the editor itself

alach11 5mo ago

Isn't a large user base and the data collected from those users a moat of sorts?

AussieWog93 5mo ago
Honestly the data itself is probably worth heaps even in the company itself collapses. Early attention engineering when humans were still in the loop!!!
- NitpickLawyer 5mo ago
  > Early attention engineering when humans were still in the loop Exactly. Cursor was the first product used by tons of devs on real codebases. Just the signal "acceptance rate" is huge and can't be easily captured w/ synthetic data.
onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago
A moat is when you have something other's can't easily get. Every MAG 7 / FAANG company already has more users and more data... That's not a moat. That's traction.
- wilg 5mo ago
  That's not X. That's Y.
  - DonHopkins 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  - uxcolumbo 5mo ago
    Been a bit out of the loop. What's wrong with using very short sentences like 'That's not X. That's Y.'?
    - arcanemachiner 5mo ago
      Commonly used phrase by LLMs. Gives people slop vibes these days.
      - Kiro 5mo ago
        "It's not X, it's Y" is a good way to illustrate a point. Same goes for many other common LLM phrases. It's used because it's effective.
      - monsieurbanana 5mo ago
        Huh. I associate it with LinkedIn slop, which is probably 100% ai nowadays but they certainly didn't wait for llms.
- LinXitoW 5mo ago
  They don't have the same quality and kind of data. For example, Claude Code might have general conversation flow data for implementing feature X, but Cursor has users individual editing actions AND the chat flow. Which line did the user manually edit after the agent did it's thing? What's the commit message (if done manually)? Stuff like that is worth it's weight in gold.

infecto 5mo ago

I am not sure we should dismiss what they have today. Nobody has yet to come close with a full package ide that works well for coding. Is that not a moat? It is easy for my to in my head discount it, thinking that I could build something myself but between autocomplete and their workflow for agent use, it feels like they have some tangible moat emerging.

chillfox 5mo ago
Have you tried Zed? I haven’t tried Cursor, so don’t know how they compare, but I like Zed a lot. Anyway, would love to see a comparison from someone who has used a recent version of each.
- turastory 5mo ago
  A few years ago I tried Zed when it was still pretty early, but eventually settled on Cursor. I gave Zed another shot a few days ago because Cursor’s worktree support still feels pretty weak. In my setup I use multiple agents like Claude Code and Codex, and Zed’s ACP support makes it pretty nice to manage them all as “threads” in one place. Worktree switching also feels much smoother. Overall the experience was pretty good, but the way the agent and editor are integrated still feels a bit lacking, and tab completion is the big one for me. Cursor’s tab completion is still the best I’ve used. So now I’m using both. For work that needs a lot of focus and careful iteration, I use Cursor. For things that are easy to split into worktrees and hand off to agents, I use Zed with Claude/Codex.
  - chillfox 5mo ago
    Interesting, is it that the tab completion is giving better results, or how it works is better?
    - ramses0 5mo ago
      The tab completion is "faster than vim" from a long-time vimmer. It's at the point where a lot of times i'll lead with the comment instead of the code: # now take the list and sort by x.lastName <tab> ...and it'll "do the thing" (w/ type hints, its own comments, etc). Obviously in this very simple, understandable, completely contrived example, it's "trivial" (but 3 years ago would have seemed like magic), but it'll also pick up on "continuation / more of the same" type edits. A comment like `# use random_utility to call the api and only accept matches which supplement addresses that have already been found` will (usually) autocomplete all the gobbledy-gook w.r.t. tokens, URL's, function names, etc. so it's effectively an "automatic omni-complete with simplistic post-processing" Example #2: I was just fixing some vibe-coded slop, where it was taking `click.echo( some_api.whatever_endpoint() )` and the "slop" portion was literally emitting: `str('{ "A": 1, "B": 2 }')` and that function call was emitting it directly. On the command line, I was doing `blah whatever-endpoint --something | jq '.'` and got tired of the JQ thing, so I'm like: "I'll just use `json.dumps(...,indent=2)`", but lo and behold, I'm getting a dumb JSON string literal, not a pretty printed object shape. I start typing `json.loads(` to move from "str()" to "dict()" ... and it autocompletes the whole scenario (on that line), then I move to `def some_other_endpoint` and it basically has that same edit queued up. (ie: it "knows" what i'm about to do). ...so overall, "faster than vim", even with high skill bar for repetition, motion, macros, sed-style edits, etc. You can't beat: "<tab>", especially when it's lightly intelligent (ie: knows when/what/str/int, adapts do different function calls, etc).

jmcqk6 5mo ago

I've been using cursor for over a year for my personal projects. At work, I use Claude Code, and so I've been wondering if I'm missing something in the other agents. Over the last week, I tried out two other agents on my personal projects: dirac and forgecode, after seeing impressive results from both of them on terminal bench. After a good amount of testing, and over $100 in open router spend, I'm back to cursor. I really liked forgecode the best, and it feels better than claude code, but cursor definitely feels best to me. Composer 2.5 is fast and effective, and it makes a huge difference. I was running `forge` with Opus, and it was taking dozens of minutes to do things, and the feedback loop was so slow. The previous version of composer was also much faster, and it makes a difference. Maybe people like context switching, but I prefer to stay focussed on the task in front of me, and I'm reviewing the code carefully. I think that's a pretty good moat. I was ready to end my subscription a week ago, and now I'm back after learning the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence.