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I stopped using Cursor when I started getting comfortable with Codex/Claude. Cursor is just annoying with the constant popups and it's just not as good. Now my

I stopped using Cursor when I started getting comfortable with Codex/Claude. Cursor is just annoying with the constant popups and it's just not as good. Now my workflow is to use my normal editor, add a todo describing what I want, and then ask Codex+gpt-5.5 to implement it. It absolutely nails it. Using codex is so much more like working with a partner vs the noise and annoyance of Cursor. That said, I think we're in a narrow window of time right now where any of this matters. Prompt "engineering" and working around your tools will be over in a year or so. Fwiw I am a c/c++ systems engineer. I think anyone mentioning anecdotal experience like this should clarify. Maybe frontend JavaScript folks have a totally different take and that's expected.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
infecto 4mo ago
I like your take and think the key takeaway is that there is no single answer for everyone. It’s like eMacs vs vim. My one question is what popups exist in cursor? It is my daily driver and I cannot recall any popups.
- ryukoposting 4mo ago
  I like cursor, but I'm assuming they're talking about how it hijacks your tab key. It's amazing when it works, and infuriating when I just want to insert a damn tab!
  - infecto 4mo ago
    Maybe that is it and agree.
  - jr3592 4mo ago
    You can disable that.
- 01100011 4mo ago
  The code suggestions. It's highly distracting and pulls me out of my flow. I know how to code and I don't mind typing. I don't need AI making trivial suggestions. I want it to do exactly what I tell it to do.
  - jr3592 4mo ago
    You can turn that off.
    - 01100011 4mo ago
      Sure but then why use it? I like my editor. Codex CLI and vim/slickedit works for me.
      - gregjw 4mo ago
        'why use it?', it has more than one feature, this is just one that most people turn off.
tombert 4mo ago
Same. When I first used Cursor, I hadn't used any of the "Vibe Code" tools out there, so it was pretty neat to have an assistant directly tied to the editor. Once I learned how to use Codex, I just used a tmux split with NeoVim and have the effect I wanted. I haven't felt compelled to use Cursor at work since.
devin 4mo ago
What are you saying is going to be over in a year or so?
- jw1224 4mo ago
  Not OP, but I generally agree. Models are powerful enough now to reliably instruct other models. They don’t need fancy tools or IDEs, just the command line. With deterministic workflows, type-safe languages and test suites, agentic loops pretty much “can’t fail”. They will continue until the types resolve, the tests pass, and the project requirements are deterministically met. By that point it’s literally just a case of typing a prompt in to a text field, and waiting.
  - ChrisLTD 4mo ago
    "project requirements are deterministically met" makes it sound so easy
  - sanderjd 4mo ago
    This seems true to me in theory, but not in practice.
  - hypfer 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - z3t4 4mo ago
    It works great in dynamic languages as well. Static typing is mostly to aid the IDE. In dynamic languages you can infer the type by looking at the code, and LLM are good at that.
- 01100011 4mo ago
  Right now I think there is an edge to how you construct prompts and config files. There is a large difference between "modify f() to do..." and "modify f() to do... Review the current variables and make sure they are still used consistent with their naming. Look for unreachable and dead code. Examine callers and called functions for side effects from the introduced changes...". I don't think that will make much difference in a year.
whstl 4mo ago
Cursor also seems to be doing something with the Claude models that makes it way slower and less efficient as times goes by. Or it could be just Claude CLI doing something very well.
FlamingMoe 4mo ago
My experience exactly... minus c++
Fiahil 4mo ago
Oh, you should try OpenSpec !
mrnaught 4mo ago
>> Fwiw I am a c/c++ systems engineer. I think anyone mentioning anecdotal experience like this should clarify. Maybe frontend JavaScript folks have a totally different take and that's expected. Similar experience, having transitioned from full-stack to a dedicated C/C++ stack, learned/experienced firsthand that there is no one-size-fits-all tool.
sergiotapia 4mo ago
On the flipside, I enjoy Cursor now and came back to it after leaving it over a year ago. The 2.5 model is fast as hell and very good. And whatever harness they have it's terrific, great results. I also really enjoy the fact that I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff. It's a really cracked workflow. The models can only get better for them.
- chasd00 4mo ago
  > I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff. I’ve never used cursor and have only seen it in a couple work lunch and learn demos. I’ve never seen that feature. I have a lot of use cases where I’m asking cc to move a widget down a little bit or make a data table full width etc. Being able to reference the actual UI would be useful.
- jr3592 4mo ago
  I would also add that Cursor's "Debug" harness is incredible. Hit "Tab" in the AI editor to Tab through the options (Plan, Multitask, Ask, etc.) If you do any kind of on-device work, it will spin up a local HTTP log server, and pipe logs from your real device (phone, hardware, etc.) to the server and do realtime debugging. Claude will mostly guess, have you copy + paste logs, etc.
  - coffee 4mo ago
    this
zzleeper 4mo ago
Same path as you. Went from $60 cursor plan (often exceeding it which costed more in API) to a limitless $100 codex plan where I basically say "read the markdown and implement the instructions". Deepseek also works quite well, surprisingly! (FWIW Im mostly using python for OCR, LLM calls, data analysis..)
ieie3366 4mo ago
Yep in my experience the weakest engs in my org are the ones still using Cursor. not a good outlook IMO
- Jcampuzano2 4mo ago
  I know this is not always true. But the same people who like cursor still are the same people who are less familiar with the terminal. And I don't know what it is but it feels the less familiar you are with a terminal, the less skilled you tend to be. Definitely not a 100% case. But has been common in my experience
  - yoyohello13 4mo ago
    I think it's more of a sign of a good engineer. I know a number of engineers that are good and don't really work with the terminal. On the other hand, every engineer I've worked with who was a 'terminal guy' was great. I think being good with the terminal is a signal that the person is willing to 'dig in' and understand stuff at a lower level.
    - gogasca 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - weatherlite 4mo ago
      > I think being good with the terminal is a signal that the person is willing to 'dig in' and understand stuff at a lower level. You know what else is a good sign of them willing to dig in and understand stuff at a lower level ? If they dig in and understan stuff at a lower level. Let's judge people on what matters - the actual work and value they bring. Not status symbols like their IDE of choice or how fast they type into the keyboard.
      - yoyohello13 4mo ago
        Yes, that's why I said 'signal' and not 'sole metric used to determine worth'. Devs get so touchy about this subject. I didn't say being good with the terminal is all that matters, it's just an extra piece of information.
hparadiz 4mo ago
I recently made an npm package with a small C helper that runs in the background. The JS/TS code is 99.9% unit test covered and for sure "cleaner" code. Just my opinion though.
baq 4mo ago
the reason to use cursor nowadays isn't the IDE (though it's helpful perhaps once a week), but how it makes running models from multiple providers trivial out of the box. I don't have to juggle keys or drop to a shell tool call, it supports calling out to e.g. gemini in a subagent natively. I have multiple models cross-reviewing plans and diffs as a matter of course. claude code was seriously annoying with the flickering, maybe it's fixed now, I don't know. cursor also has a (bad) cli if you need it, it seems it's mostly used to setup remote agents, but it does the job in a pinch.
- stavros 4mo ago
  OpenCode and Pi do those things as well, and without a whole annoying IDE bundled in.
  - infecto 4mo ago
    OpenCode is miserable from a security perspective. Well clarification the plans they offer where they bundled in free models that train on your use. You are then left to use an OpenRouter which I find pretty flaky for at least the leading Chinese models.
    - stavros 4mo ago
      I just use my ChatGPT subscription with it. Not sure what you mean about security.
      - infecto 4mo ago
        “Well clarification the plans they offer where they bundled in free models that train on your use.” Just what I said. They offer paid plans through their tool. Said paid plans are kind of a dark pattern where it’s not immediately obvious the models are training on your data. The harness is fine but that kind of business turns me off and I am usually pretty neutral about those sorts of things.
    - jeremyjh 4mo ago
redox99 4mo ago
I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disliked the "accept/reject" workflow in cursor, but that's probably optional nowadays I guess?
- digitaltrees 4mo ago
  I love the accept reject flow because I still constantly have to stop AI models from writing awful architecture or reimplementing code we already wrote elsewhere
  - flyingoat 4mo ago
    Yeah, I have found the same. A lot of times it does get things right, but if it deviates man it can just drift hard. For example, sometimes Claude just obsessively reads files and goes on massive tangents. Then when I stop it and ask, "why are you doing that?", it kindly apologizes and admits it shouldn't have gone on a tangent. The token burn if I don't stop it would be quite high. Granted, this might be because I'm not giving it optimal prompt/negative-prompt instructions though.
  - chamomeal 4mo ago
    I just check the git diff after claude code writes stuff. Stage things before letting it run wild so I can undo whatevs.
    - noworriesnate 4mo ago
      That's expensive though. The sooner you stop it from acting out the less you spend on a rabbit trail.
  - tclancy 4mo ago
    How is it different from Keep / Discard in other tools? I've been slowly converting my git repositories to jj locally because that gives me more granular fallback and mix and match options.
risyachka 4mo ago
Cursors target users are not developers but casual vibe coders.
- simondotau 4mo ago
  Literally the opposite is true. Being a text editor at its core, and by spending a lot of effort refining the human-AI pair programming experience, Cursor makes sense for someone who wants to lead code development with AI being a speed multiplier and a team member. Tools like CC are best suited to vibe coding.
jmuguy 4mo ago
I think I'm late to the party with cursor but I don't use it as an editor at all, I keep VS Code open on another screen for that. All I do in there is agent sessions. I would be open to something else but all the comparisons I see are out of date and talk about the IDE a lot.
- sanderjd 4mo ago
  The comparison is with Claude Code and codex (and open harnesses like opencode and Pi). IMO they are both better, if you aren't interested in the IDE functionality.
ghshephard 4mo ago
I use cursor 8+ hours/day at work, and have full (and effectively unlimited) access to Claude Code and Codex - tools which I also use personally. I suspect that your "constant popups" were when you were using the editor - a mode that I'll confess I haven't touched in 3+ months. Workflow in Cursor is actually awesome - I'm a little outdated in how I use it - I still establish goals/objectives, rather than managing the loop which does so - but if you can think broadly enough - I find it's pretty efficient. Key things I like about Cursor (and I recognize I'm dating myself a bit here): - Plan Mode is really solid - I shift-tab, have it go create the plan using whatever insanely expensive SOTA model is available - I will usually spend 5-10 minutes on the Plan - review it, maybe even tweak it a little. (though 90% of the time it's fine out of the gate) - Ability to select any model for every task - I'll switch between Opus 4.8 High/xHigh/... I'll even switch to 1M context for the planning phase upfront. - It does an *excellent* job managing permissions and looping the agents and spinning up sub-agents for you - you set the goal, run the plan mode - and then let it churn for however long is required - pretty common to have a 30-45 minute run and come back to a fully created/tested product. The nice thing about Cursor (and honestly Claude Code, Codex) - there isn't really any "prompt engineering" involved. You just say, "Go Build me x - it should have y,z features - and build it in golang for me" - and that's it - the 3-4 page Plan comes back - usually pretty credible - and then you click "build.".
- UncleOxidant 4mo ago
  But what's the $60B differentiator here? There are so many similar tools out there. I generally use Opencode, but also Claude code, antigravity and sometimes Kilo code on VS Studio. How can cursor be worth even 10% of 60B?
  - woobar 4mo ago
    > How can cursor be worth even 10% of 60B? Maybe because SpaceX paid with monopoly money (all stock deal)?
    - nwienert 4mo ago
storus 4mo ago
Dunno, Cursor's agents are now more-less equal to Claude Code, just the workflow is slightly different. I like the IDE integration for some projects, allowing me to quickly inspect/review/change/search code, while running Claude Code/Codex/OpenCode/Pi/Hermes on different projects often with local models and it's mostly a question about your personal development style instead of inherent tool capabilities.
templar_snow 4mo ago
Same.
kensai 4mo ago
"Prompt "engineering" and working around your tools will be over in a year or so." What do you mean by that? What is happening in just over a year or so?
- arglebarnacle 4mo ago
  The models are getting better at agentic coding, so over time using complicated harnesses and precise prompt engineering to attempt to squeeze out an extra X% performance will become irrelevant as the models approach expert-level performance. The bitter lesson in miniature.
  - trees101 4mo ago
    there will always be a difference between the general capabilities, and the particularities of your exact environment and requirements. Closing this gap is done in the harness, either through Skills, user behaviour/prompts , Agents.md etc etc. I think that this is an area worth investing time in, but it is indeed hard to know what the scope of this is.
- aenis 4mo ago
  I think Fable gave a bit of a sneak peek into the future. My objective KPI: for the few days I was using Fable (18hr a day), it would frequently push back against my design ideas and propose alternatives -- and they almost always felt better to me. Back to Opus now, still 18hr days - and I dont think it disagreed with me meaningfully even once since Saturdy. I consider myself and old hand -- and i think Fable really didn't need me to be very specific in my prompts, it would have done a good job regardless, or even despite my prompting. Of course whether this is the future is anyone's guess. Maybe we will experience a butlerian jihad and there won't be any prompting whatsoever for completely different reasons :-)
  - mikestorrent 4mo ago
    Remember to go outside once in a while, my dude
rob74 4mo ago
It is possible to use Cursor via ACP, so you can use it in any editor that supports ACP (notably the JetBrains IDEs). Our company went all in with Cursor and at the same time centrally disabled the AI functionality of JetBrains IDEs, but a pretty large group of developers (me included) were so vocal about wanting to continue to use our "old" IDEs that IT eventually relented and enabled the plugins needed to support Cursor.
- ozim 4mo ago
  You know you can open the same project in cursor so agent does its own stuff and then opens JetBrains IDE to do your code navigation etc. ? I am pissed off by people calling Cursor an IDE … Cursor is text editor with AI agents bolted on. I still like what agents do and how the context is managed in Cursor but it is far far away from proper IDE.
sanp 4mo ago
Could you clarify what you mean by “…will be over in a year or so”. Genuine question. Is it that models will be so good that none of this matters or we will need to go back to older ways?
nurumaik 4mo ago
Also C++ engineer, but from my perspective, for large tasks, agentic coding is still lacking no matter how well I describe desired output. So in that cases I fall back to manual coding and cursor tab helps a lot with boring parts
- 01100011 4mo ago
  Define "large tasks". I actually don't let AI take on large tasks beyond test writing and refactoring helper scripts/utils. I keep it on a very short leash for driver/middleware code since the quality bar needs to be extremely high for our codebase. Up until recently I didn't even trust it for that, but some experiments show it's fairly good and even detected issues outside of the refactored functions which I did let it touch. This is with a good amount of 'thought engineering' though where I try to think hard about how to emphasize certain factors and define the problem as best I can.
  - menaerus 4mo ago
    I've used AI but not through Cursor to implement a high-performance serialization library using expression templates. Non-trivial and few kLoC targeting a soft-realtime and critical system. Would you consider that a large task?
- mikestorrent 4mo ago
  Companies with large C/C++ codebases should sell AI companies the right to train on their code for $$.
marcuschong 4mo ago
It's curious that the person claiming LLMs will soon skip code entirely and go straight to binary is willing to spend $60bn on Cursor.
- zs234465234165 4mo ago
  I’m sure he has a good reason
mintflow 4mo ago
As previously C system programmer, I barely use IDE, cli agent for coding and desktop codex for various non coding tasks. Nowadays settled to codex/gpt5.5 and it does really good job
tejohnso 4mo ago
Also using codex as a full time partner these days. What do you think happens in a year or so that changes the way it works around the tools? It becomes the only tool we interact with, and it assumes control over the others?
matsemann 4mo ago
Cursor is mostly no longer an editor. By default it now opens an agent window only, you have to click a few buttons to actually edit files yourself.
yieldcrv 4mo ago
multiple organizations I contract with have killed their cursor enterprise plans over the past several weeks to me, this seems like the perfect time for Cursor to exit and even "Q3 completion" is too late. Deal just needs to close. Fortunately Q3 completion could mean July 1st too
port11 4mo ago
Composer is fairly decent. Many people aren’t in the market for an IDE — and a subpar one at that —, but they could sell API access to Composer itself.
presentation 4mo ago
I primarily use Cursor, compared against Claude and haven't used Codex before - to me the benefits: - Composer 2.5 is cheap, fast, and very effective; I don't even use other models that much anymore, as it's usually marginally better for way more cost, though sometimes I do for specific things like making better translations for our app than a coding-specific model could normally output - It makes setting up and maintaining Cloud Agents super easy, the agent can basically set up itself and if anything changes that makes it not update properly, then it tells you and can fix itself easily - Easy to move agents from remotely in the cloud to local and vice versa - Easy to work with agents via either comments on GitHub, or via the web app on my phone (though it is relatively constrained relative to the actual desktop UI, which is a bummer) - Code reviews with Bugbot is surprisingly good now vs when it first came out, as is the Security Agent, while being an order of magnitude cheaper than stuff like Claude reviews - Automations are easy to configure and manage - crons, in response to repo events, etc. For example I don't use Renovate or Dependabot much anymore since LLMs can update deps and investigate subtle breaking changes much better than a dumb version bump script can - Limits are obvious rather than Anthropic's mysterious quota amount that they don't explain at all - Queueing up messages rather than the agent taking in new messages mid-work and then trying to mesh them together somehow - I find queueing much more predictable and easier to work with - Plan mode is good too, but not particularly different than any other agent - Easy to jump into the Editor view and actually go in and manually code things or interactively code with the LLM when you need to, since sometimes LLMs just suck at doing certain things autonomously. I'm not in the "stop coding bro" camp, I still like to take the wheel fairly often.
jemmyw 4mo ago
I didn't like cursor when it first came about but now I use it for my personal projects. The plan is good value for accessing different sota models occasionally for planning. Composer is actually really good, and fast. I'm not sure if it's because my personal projects are small enough I know them inside out and my work project is huge, but I prefer terminal code agents for day work over ide integration.
pdantix 4mo ago
i moved all my AI coding over to claude code when claude 4 came out, but kept cursor for the tab complete. since opus 4.5 i haven't really needed the tab complete so i canceled my cursor sub 6 months ago. switched back to vscode so i'm not exposed to the potential mess that is openvsx too. trying to get used to zed but i'm just so used to vscode
anshumankmr 4mo ago
>That said, I think we're in a narrow window of time right now where any of this matters. Prompt "engineering" and working around your tools will be over in a year or so. How so?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

infecto 4mo ago

I like your take and think the key takeaway is that there is no single answer for everyone. It’s like eMacs vs vim. My one question is what popups exist in cursor? It is my daily driver and I cannot recall any popups.

ryukoposting 4mo ago
I like cursor, but I'm assuming they're talking about how it hijacks your tab key. It's amazing when it works, and infuriating when I just want to insert a damn tab!
- infecto 4mo ago
  Maybe that is it and agree.
- jr3592 4mo ago
  You can disable that.
01100011 4mo ago
The code suggestions. It's highly distracting and pulls me out of my flow. I know how to code and I don't mind typing. I don't need AI making trivial suggestions. I want it to do exactly what I tell it to do.
- jr3592 4mo ago
  You can turn that off.
  - 01100011 4mo ago
    Sure but then why use it? I like my editor. Codex CLI and vim/slickedit works for me.
    - gregjw 4mo ago
      'why use it?', it has more than one feature, this is just one that most people turn off.

tombert 4mo ago

Same. When I first used Cursor, I hadn't used any of the "Vibe Code" tools out there, so it was pretty neat to have an assistant directly tied to the editor. Once I learned how to use Codex, I just used a tmux split with NeoVim and have the effect I wanted. I haven't felt compelled to use Cursor at work since.

devin 4mo ago

What are you saying is going to be over in a year or so?

jw1224 4mo ago
Not OP, but I generally agree. Models are powerful enough now to reliably instruct other models. They don’t need fancy tools or IDEs, just the command line. With deterministic workflows, type-safe languages and test suites, agentic loops pretty much “can’t fail”. They will continue until the types resolve, the tests pass, and the project requirements are deterministically met. By that point it’s literally just a case of typing a prompt in to a text field, and waiting.
- ChrisLTD 4mo ago
  "project requirements are deterministically met" makes it sound so easy
- sanderjd 4mo ago
  This seems true to me in theory, but not in practice.
- hypfer 4mo ago
  [dead]
- z3t4 4mo ago
  It works great in dynamic languages as well. Static typing is mostly to aid the IDE. In dynamic languages you can infer the type by looking at the code, and LLM are good at that.
01100011 4mo ago
Right now I think there is an edge to how you construct prompts and config files. There is a large difference between "modify f() to do..." and "modify f() to do... Review the current variables and make sure they are still used consistent with their naming. Look for unreachable and dead code. Examine callers and called functions for side effects from the introduced changes...". I don't think that will make much difference in a year.

whstl 4mo ago

Cursor also seems to be doing something with the Claude models that makes it way slower and less efficient as times goes by. Or it could be just Claude CLI doing something very well.

FlamingMoe 4mo ago

My experience exactly... minus c++

Fiahil 4mo ago

Oh, you should try OpenSpec !

mrnaught 4mo ago

>> Fwiw I am a c/c++ systems engineer. I think anyone mentioning anecdotal experience like this should clarify. Maybe frontend JavaScript folks have a totally different take and that's expected. Similar experience, having transitioned from full-stack to a dedicated C/C++ stack, learned/experienced firsthand that there is no one-size-fits-all tool.

sergiotapia 4mo ago

On the flipside, I enjoy Cursor now and came back to it after leaving it over a year ago. The 2.5 model is fast as hell and very good. And whatever harness they have it's terrific, great results. I also really enjoy the fact that I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff. It's a really cracked workflow. The models can only get better for them.

chasd00 4mo ago
> I can open my website in the Cursor in-app browser and just click and reference stuff. I’ve never used cursor and have only seen it in a couple work lunch and learn demos. I’ve never seen that feature. I have a lot of use cases where I’m asking cc to move a widget down a little bit or make a data table full width etc. Being able to reference the actual UI would be useful.
jr3592 4mo ago
I would also add that Cursor's "Debug" harness is incredible. Hit "Tab" in the AI editor to Tab through the options (Plan, Multitask, Ask, etc.) If you do any kind of on-device work, it will spin up a local HTTP log server, and pipe logs from your real device (phone, hardware, etc.) to the server and do realtime debugging. Claude will mostly guess, have you copy + paste logs, etc.
- coffee 4mo ago
  this

zzleeper 4mo ago

Same path as you. Went from $60 cursor plan (often exceeding it which costed more in API) to a limitless $100 codex plan where I basically say "read the markdown and implement the instructions". Deepseek also works quite well, surprisingly! (FWIW Im mostly using python for OCR, LLM calls, data analysis..)

ieie3366 4mo ago

Yep in my experience the weakest engs in my org are the ones still using Cursor. not a good outlook IMO

Jcampuzano2 4mo ago
I know this is not always true. But the same people who like cursor still are the same people who are less familiar with the terminal. And I don't know what it is but it feels the less familiar you are with a terminal, the less skilled you tend to be. Definitely not a 100% case. But has been common in my experience
- yoyohello13 4mo ago
  I think it's more of a sign of a good engineer. I know a number of engineers that are good and don't really work with the terminal. On the other hand, every engineer I've worked with who was a 'terminal guy' was great. I think being good with the terminal is a signal that the person is willing to 'dig in' and understand stuff at a lower level.
  - gogasca 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - weatherlite 4mo ago
    > I think being good with the terminal is a signal that the person is willing to 'dig in' and understand stuff at a lower level. You know what else is a good sign of them willing to dig in and understand stuff at a lower level ? If they dig in and understan stuff at a lower level. Let's judge people on what matters - the actual work and value they bring. Not status symbols like their IDE of choice or how fast they type into the keyboard.
    - yoyohello13 4mo ago
      Yes, that's why I said 'signal' and not 'sole metric used to determine worth'. Devs get so touchy about this subject. I didn't say being good with the terminal is all that matters, it's just an extra piece of information.

hparadiz 4mo ago

I recently made an npm package with a small C helper that runs in the background. The JS/TS code is 99.9% unit test covered and for sure "cleaner" code. Just my opinion though.

baq 4mo ago

the reason to use cursor nowadays isn't the IDE (though it's helpful perhaps once a week), but how it makes running models from multiple providers trivial out of the box. I don't have to juggle keys or drop to a shell tool call, it supports calling out to e.g. gemini in a subagent natively. I have multiple models cross-reviewing plans and diffs as a matter of course. claude code was seriously annoying with the flickering, maybe it's fixed now, I don't know. cursor also has a (bad) cli if you need it, it seems it's mostly used to setup remote agents, but it does the job in a pinch.

stavros 4mo ago
OpenCode and Pi do those things as well, and without a whole annoying IDE bundled in.
- infecto 4mo ago
  OpenCode is miserable from a security perspective. Well clarification the plans they offer where they bundled in free models that train on your use. You are then left to use an OpenRouter which I find pretty flaky for at least the leading Chinese models.
  - stavros 4mo ago
    I just use my ChatGPT subscription with it. Not sure what you mean about security.
    - infecto 4mo ago
      “Well clarification the plans they offer where they bundled in free models that train on your use.” Just what I said. They offer paid plans through their tool. Said paid plans are kind of a dark pattern where it’s not immediately obvious the models are training on your data. The harness is fine but that kind of business turns me off and I am usually pretty neutral about those sorts of things.
  - jeremyjh 4mo ago

redox99 4mo ago

I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disliked the "accept/reject" workflow in cursor, but that's probably optional nowadays I guess?

digitaltrees 4mo ago
I love the accept reject flow because I still constantly have to stop AI models from writing awful architecture or reimplementing code we already wrote elsewhere
- flyingoat 4mo ago
  Yeah, I have found the same. A lot of times it does get things right, but if it deviates man it can just drift hard. For example, sometimes Claude just obsessively reads files and goes on massive tangents. Then when I stop it and ask, "why are you doing that?", it kindly apologizes and admits it shouldn't have gone on a tangent. The token burn if I don't stop it would be quite high. Granted, this might be because I'm not giving it optimal prompt/negative-prompt instructions though.
- chamomeal 4mo ago
  I just check the git diff after claude code writes stuff. Stage things before letting it run wild so I can undo whatevs.
  - noworriesnate 4mo ago
    That's expensive though. The sooner you stop it from acting out the less you spend on a rabbit trail.
- tclancy 4mo ago
  How is it different from Keep / Discard in other tools? I've been slowly converting my git repositories to jj locally because that gives me more granular fallback and mix and match options.

risyachka 4mo ago

Cursors target users are not developers but casual vibe coders.

simondotau 4mo ago
Literally the opposite is true. Being a text editor at its core, and by spending a lot of effort refining the human-AI pair programming experience, Cursor makes sense for someone who wants to lead code development with AI being a speed multiplier and a team member. Tools like CC are best suited to vibe coding.

jmuguy 4mo ago

I think I'm late to the party with cursor but I don't use it as an editor at all, I keep VS Code open on another screen for that. All I do in there is agent sessions. I would be open to something else but all the comparisons I see are out of date and talk about the IDE a lot.

sanderjd 4mo ago
The comparison is with Claude Code and codex (and open harnesses like opencode and Pi). IMO they are both better, if you aren't interested in the IDE functionality.

ghshephard 4mo ago

I use cursor 8+ hours/day at work, and have full (and effectively unlimited) access to Claude Code and Codex - tools which I also use personally. I suspect that your "constant popups" were when you were using the editor - a mode that I'll confess I haven't touched in 3+ months. Workflow in Cursor is actually awesome - I'm a little outdated in how I use it - I still establish goals/objectives, rather than managing the loop which does so - but if you can think broadly enough - I find it's pretty efficient. Key things I like about Cursor (and I recognize I'm dating myself a bit here): - Plan Mode is really solid - I shift-tab, have it go create the plan using whatever insanely expensive SOTA model is available - I will usually spend 5-10 minutes on the Plan - review it, maybe even tweak it a little. (though 90% of the time it's fine out of the gate) - Ability to select any model for every task - I'll switch between Opus 4.8 High/xHigh/... I'll even switch to 1M context for the planning phase upfront. - It does an *excellent* job managing permissions and looping the agents and spinning up sub-agents for you - you set the goal, run the plan mode - and then let it churn for however long is required - pretty common to have a 30-45 minute run and come back to a fully created/tested product. The nice thing about Cursor (and honestly Claude Code, Codex) - there isn't really any "prompt engineering" involved. You just say, "Go Build me x - it should have y,z features - and build it in golang for me" - and that's it - the 3-4 page Plan comes back - usually pretty credible - and then you click "build.".

UncleOxidant 4mo ago
But what's the $60B differentiator here? There are so many similar tools out there. I generally use Opencode, but also Claude code, antigravity and sometimes Kilo code on VS Studio. How can cursor be worth even 10% of 60B?
- woobar 4mo ago
  > How can cursor be worth even 10% of 60B? Maybe because SpaceX paid with monopoly money (all stock deal)?
  - nwienert 4mo ago

storus 4mo ago

Dunno, Cursor's agents are now more-less equal to Claude Code, just the workflow is slightly different. I like the IDE integration for some projects, allowing me to quickly inspect/review/change/search code, while running Claude Code/Codex/OpenCode/Pi/Hermes on different projects often with local models and it's mostly a question about your personal development style instead of inherent tool capabilities.

templar_snow 4mo ago

Same.

kensai 4mo ago

"Prompt "engineering" and working around your tools will be over in a year or so." What do you mean by that? What is happening in just over a year or so?

arglebarnacle 4mo ago
The models are getting better at agentic coding, so over time using complicated harnesses and precise prompt engineering to attempt to squeeze out an extra X% performance will become irrelevant as the models approach expert-level performance. The bitter lesson in miniature.
- trees101 4mo ago
  there will always be a difference between the general capabilities, and the particularities of your exact environment and requirements. Closing this gap is done in the harness, either through Skills, user behaviour/prompts , Agents.md etc etc. I think that this is an area worth investing time in, but it is indeed hard to know what the scope of this is.
aenis 4mo ago
I think Fable gave a bit of a sneak peek into the future. My objective KPI: for the few days I was using Fable (18hr a day), it would frequently push back against my design ideas and propose alternatives -- and they almost always felt better to me. Back to Opus now, still 18hr days - and I dont think it disagreed with me meaningfully even once since Saturdy. I consider myself and old hand -- and i think Fable really didn't need me to be very specific in my prompts, it would have done a good job regardless, or even despite my prompting. Of course whether this is the future is anyone's guess. Maybe we will experience a butlerian jihad and there won't be any prompting whatsoever for completely different reasons :-)
- mikestorrent 4mo ago
  Remember to go outside once in a while, my dude

rob74 4mo ago

It is possible to use Cursor via ACP, so you can use it in any editor that supports ACP (notably the JetBrains IDEs). Our company went all in with Cursor and at the same time centrally disabled the AI functionality of JetBrains IDEs, but a pretty large group of developers (me included) were so vocal about wanting to continue to use our "old" IDEs that IT eventually relented and enabled the plugins needed to support Cursor.

ozim 4mo ago
You know you can open the same project in cursor so agent does its own stuff and then opens JetBrains IDE to do your code navigation etc. ? I am pissed off by people calling Cursor an IDE … Cursor is text editor with AI agents bolted on. I still like what agents do and how the context is managed in Cursor but it is far far away from proper IDE.

sanp 4mo ago

Could you clarify what you mean by “…will be over in a year or so”. Genuine question. Is it that models will be so good that none of this matters or we will need to go back to older ways?

nurumaik 4mo ago

Also C++ engineer, but from my perspective, for large tasks, agentic coding is still lacking no matter how well I describe desired output. So in that cases I fall back to manual coding and cursor tab helps a lot with boring parts

01100011 4mo ago
Define "large tasks". I actually don't let AI take on large tasks beyond test writing and refactoring helper scripts/utils. I keep it on a very short leash for driver/middleware code since the quality bar needs to be extremely high for our codebase. Up until recently I didn't even trust it for that, but some experiments show it's fairly good and even detected issues outside of the refactored functions which I did let it touch. This is with a good amount of 'thought engineering' though where I try to think hard about how to emphasize certain factors and define the problem as best I can.
- menaerus 4mo ago
  I've used AI but not through Cursor to implement a high-performance serialization library using expression templates. Non-trivial and few kLoC targeting a soft-realtime and critical system. Would you consider that a large task?
mikestorrent 4mo ago
Companies with large C/C++ codebases should sell AI companies the right to train on their code for $$.

marcuschong 4mo ago

It's curious that the person claiming LLMs will soon skip code entirely and go straight to binary is willing to spend $60bn on Cursor.

zs234465234165 4mo ago
I’m sure he has a good reason

mintflow 4mo ago

As previously C system programmer, I barely use IDE, cli agent for coding and desktop codex for various non coding tasks. Nowadays settled to codex/gpt5.5 and it does really good job

tejohnso 4mo ago

Also using codex as a full time partner these days. What do you think happens in a year or so that changes the way it works around the tools? It becomes the only tool we interact with, and it assumes control over the others?

matsemann 4mo ago

Cursor is mostly no longer an editor. By default it now opens an agent window only, you have to click a few buttons to actually edit files yourself.

yieldcrv 4mo ago

multiple organizations I contract with have killed their cursor enterprise plans over the past several weeks to me, this seems like the perfect time for Cursor to exit and even "Q3 completion" is too late. Deal just needs to close. Fortunately Q3 completion could mean July 1st too

port11 4mo ago

Composer is fairly decent. Many people aren’t in the market for an IDE — and a subpar one at that —, but they could sell API access to Composer itself.

presentation 4mo ago

I primarily use Cursor, compared against Claude and haven't used Codex before - to me the benefits: - Composer 2.5 is cheap, fast, and very effective; I don't even use other models that much anymore, as it's usually marginally better for way more cost, though sometimes I do for specific things like making better translations for our app than a coding-specific model could normally output - It makes setting up and maintaining Cloud Agents super easy, the agent can basically set up itself and if anything changes that makes it not update properly, then it tells you and can fix itself easily - Easy to move agents from remotely in the cloud to local and vice versa - Easy to work with agents via either comments on GitHub, or via the web app on my phone (though it is relatively constrained relative to the actual desktop UI, which is a bummer) - Code reviews with Bugbot is surprisingly good now vs when it first came out, as is the Security Agent, while being an order of magnitude cheaper than stuff like Claude reviews - Automations are easy to configure and manage - crons, in response to repo events, etc. For example I don't use Renovate or Dependabot much anymore since LLMs can update deps and investigate subtle breaking changes much better than a dumb version bump script can - Limits are obvious rather than Anthropic's mysterious quota amount that they don't explain at all - Queueing up messages rather than the agent taking in new messages mid-work and then trying to mesh them together somehow - I find queueing much more predictable and easier to work with - Plan mode is good too, but not particularly different than any other agent - Easy to jump into the Editor view and actually go in and manually code things or interactively code with the LLM when you need to, since sometimes LLMs just suck at doing certain things autonomously. I'm not in the "stop coding bro" camp, I still like to take the wheel fairly often.

jemmyw 4mo ago

I didn't like cursor when it first came about but now I use it for my personal projects. The plan is good value for accessing different sota models occasionally for planning. Composer is actually really good, and fast. I'm not sure if it's because my personal projects are small enough I know them inside out and my work project is huge, but I prefer terminal code agents for day work over ide integration.

pdantix 4mo ago

i moved all my AI coding over to claude code when claude 4 came out, but kept cursor for the tab complete. since opus 4.5 i haven't really needed the tab complete so i canceled my cursor sub 6 months ago. switched back to vscode so i'm not exposed to the potential mess that is openvsx too. trying to get used to zed but i'm just so used to vscode

anshumankmr 4mo ago

>That said, I think we're in a narrow window of time right now where any of this matters. Prompt "engineering" and working around your tools will be over in a year or so. How so?