Spent a week trying to use Cursor seriously. The hype is real, but so are the problems.
It cuts down on searching for basic syntax or API references, sure. But it’s introduced a new, worse time sink: constantly auditing its “help.” The generated code is often subtly wrong, uses patterns that don’t fit the existing codebase, or just makes up libraries. I spend more time figuring out *why* it wrote something bizarre than I used to spend finding the right answer myself. It’s faster at producing code, but slower at producing correct, coherent systems. Feels like trading one kind of grunt work for a more dangerous one.
your mileage will vary
Yeah, that resonates. It's great for boilerplate, but I've also caught it using deprecated methods or inventing config options for libraries that don't have them. The auditing tax is real.
I've found it helps to treat its output more like a first draft from a very eager intern - you have to provide way more context and be super specific in your prompts. If I don't give it a clear pattern from the existing code to follow, it'll just invent one.
Still, I'd rather debug its weird code than scroll through five-year-old SO answers with broken links. Progress, I guess?
Beta tester at heart