Key phrase "They never actually claim this browser is working and functional
" This is what most AI "successes" turn out to be when you apply even a modicum of scrutiny.
In my personal experience, Codex and Claude Code are definitively capable tools when used in certain ways.
What Cursor did with their blogpost seems intentionally and outright misleading, since I'm not able to even run the thing. With Codex/Claude Codex it's relatively easy to download it and run it to try for yourself.
Yes, many tools work like that, especially professional tools.
You think you can just fire up Ableton, Cubase or whatever and make as great music as a artist who done that for a long time? No, it requires practice and understanding. Every tool works like this, some different difficulties, some different skill levels, but all of them have it in some way.
This is the company making the tool that is holding the tool, in this case, claiming that "[they] built a browser" when, if TFA's assertions are correct, they did not "build a browser" by any reasonable interpretation of those words.
(I grant that you're speaking from your experience, about different tools, two replies up, but this claims is just paper-rock-scissorable through these various AI tools. "Oh, this tool's authors are just hype, but this tool works totes-mc-oates…". Fool me once, and all.)
Yes, and apparently is a horrible way, because they've obviously failed to produce a functioning browser. But since I'm the author of TFA, I guess I'm kind of biased in this discussion.
Codex was sold to me as a tool that can help me do program. I tried it, evaluated it, found it helpful, continued using it. Based on my experience, it definitively helps with some tasks. Apparently also, it does not work for others, for some not at all. I know the tool works for me, and I take the claim that it doesn't for others, what am I left to believe in? That the tool doesn't actually work, even though my own experience and usage of it says otherwise?
Codex is still an "AI success", regardless if it could build an entire browser by itself, from scratch, or whatever. It helps as it is today, I wouldn't need it to get better to continue using it.
But even with this perspective, which I'd say is "nuanced" (others would claim "AI zealot" probably), I'm trying to see if what Cursor claims is actually true, that they managed to build a browser in that way. When it doesn't seem true, I call it out. I still disagree with "This is what most AI "successes" turn out to be when you apply even a modicum of scrutiny", and I'm claiming what Cursor is doing here is different.
Not even the Ableton marketing team is telling me I can just fire up Ableton and make great music and if I can't do that I must be a brainwashed doomer.
The argument isn't what OpenAI/Anthropic are selling their users, what I said was:
> are definitively capable tools when used in certain ways
Which I received pushback on. My reply is to that pushback, defending what I said, not what others told you.
Edit: Besides the point, but Ableton (and others) constantly tell people how to learn how to use the tool, so they use it the right way. There is a whole industry of people (teachers) who specialize in specific software/hardware and teaching others "how to hold the tool correctly".
> Besides the point, but Ableton (and others) constantly tell people how to learn how to use the tool, so they use it the right way
It's just an odd comparison to begin with. You said
> You think you can just fire up Ableton, Cubase or whatever and make as great music as a artist who done that for a long time
I don't think you have to be good at Ableton at all to make good music. I don't think you can even argue it would benefit your music to learn Ableton. There's a crap ton of people who are wizards with their DAW making mediocre music. A DAW can be fun to learn, and that can help me keep my flow state. But it's not literally going to make better music, and the fundamentals of production don't change at all from DAW to DAW.
That's a totally separate thing from LLMs. We are constantly told that if we learn the magic way to use LLMs, we can spit out functioning code a lot faster. But in reality, people are just generating code faster than they can verify it.
> That's a totally separate thing from LLMs. We are constantly told that if we learn the magic way to use LLMs, we can spit out functioning code a lot faster. But in reality, people are just generating code faster than they can verify it.
I don't see it as it is. LLMs are not magically gonna make you be able to produce high-quality software, just like Ableton isn't gonna magically gonna make you be able to produce high-quality music. But if you learn the tool, it gets a lot easier to use effectively. And the better you are at "producing high quality music/code", probably the more use you can make of Ableton/LLMs, compared to someone who aren't good at those things already.
Again, what you're being told by other people, I don't know, and frankly don't really care. OpenAI sold Codex to me as a tool that can help me, a programmer, do programming, and that's exactly what that tool gives me.
Cursor in their article tried to sell their tool as something that can "Hundreds of agents can work together on a single codebase for weeks, making real progress on ambitious projects" which I claim in TFA, doesn't seem to be true.
> "definitively capable tools when used in certain ways". This sounds like "if it doesn't work for you is because you don't use in the right way" imo.
Yes, because that's what it is. If you seriously can't get Gemini 3 or Opus 4.5 to work you're either using it wrong or coding on something extremely esoteric.
> Codex and Claude Code are definitively capable tools when used in certain ways.
They definitely can make some things better and you can do somethings faster, but all the efficiency is gonna get sucked up by companies trying to drop more slop.
Yes that's completely expected. Just like any other tool or service.
It's just like a chisel. Well the chisel company didn't promise to let you become a master craftsman overnight but anyway it's just like a chisel in that you have to learn how to use it. And people expect a chisel to actually chisel through wood out the box but anyway it's exactly like a chisel.
