Using cline for a bit made me realize cursor was doomed. Everything is just a gpt/anthropic wrapper of fancy prompts.
I can do most of what I want with cline, and I've gone back from large changes to just small changes and been moving much quicker. Large refactors/changes start to deviate from what you actually want to accomplish unless you have written a dissertation, and even then they fail.
I agree with all you’ve said but with regards to writing a dissertation for larger changes : have you tried letting it first right a plan for you as markdown (just keep this file uncommitted) and then let it build a checklist of things to do?
I find just referencing this file over and over works wonders and it respects items that were already checked off really well.
I can get a lot done really fast this way in small enough chunks so i know every bit of code and how it works (tweaking manually of course where needed).
But I can blow through some tickets way faster than before this way.
IIRC problem is that VS Code does not allow extensions to create custom UI in the panels areas except for WebViews(?). It makes for not a great experience. Plus Cursor does a lot with background indexing to make their tab completion model really good - more than would be possible with the extensions APIs available.
Not if you want custom UI. There are a lot of things you can do in extension land (continue, cline, roocode, kilocode, etc. are good examples) but there are some things you can't.
One thing I would have thought would be really cool to try is to integrate it at the LSP level, and use all that good stuff, but apparently people trying (I think there was a company from .il trying) either went closed or didn't release anything note worthy...
When the Copilot extension needs a new VS Code feature it gets added, but it isn't available to third party extensions until months later... Err, years later... well, whenever Microsoft feels like it.
So an extension will never be able to compete with Copilot.
I use Augment extensively and find it superior to cursor in every way - and operates as an extension. It has a really handy task planning interface and meta prompt refinement feature and the costs are remarkably low. The quality of output implantation is higher IMO and I don’t have to do a lot of model selection and don’t get Max model bill explosions. If there’s something Cursor provided that Augment doesn’t via extension it was not functionally useful enough to notice.
I think Augment has been flying under the radar for many people, and really reserve better marketing.
I've been using Augment for over a year with IntelliJ, and never understood why my colleagues were all raving about Cursor and Windsurf. I gave Cursor a real try, but it wasn't any better, and the value proposition of having to adopt a dedicated IDE wasn't attractive to me.
A plugin to leverage your existing tools makes a lot more sense than an IDE. Or at least until/if AI agents get so smart that you don't need most of the IDE's functionality, which might change what kinds of tooling are needed when you're in the passenger seat rather than the driver's seat.
I've really struggled with using the extensions - their UI/UX is worse, they're much more limited in what they can do and they're much more unstable (in IntelliJ at least).
Then again writing mostly kotlin I cannot get along with the VS Code forks as they're just not that great outside of typescript projects in my experience.
I tend to prompt in cursor/windsurf and refactor in IntelliJ which is okay but a bit of a pain.
You can do small refactors here and there but usually things get complex after some time. My first advice was to not overthink on architecture in the beginning so it is inevitable that you will end up with something quite unorganized after a while. The assumption here is that in the beginning you won't know what the architecture will look like in the future because you are in startup/discovery mode.
Refactoring such a codebase while keeping everything running can be a monumental effort. I found it very hard to keep people who work on such a project motivated. Analyzing the use cases, coming up with a new design incorporating your learnings and then seeing clear progress towards the goal of a cleaner codebase is much more motivating. Engineers get the chance to do something new instead of "moving code around".
I'm not saying rewrite everything. When you get to this point it usually makes sense to start thinking about these abstractions which I advised to avoid in the beginning. You can begin to separate parts of the system by responsibility and then you rewrite just one part and give it a new API which other parts of your system will consume. Usually by that time you'll also want to restructure your database.
Thanks! I just can't get over how much like a Brooklyn gangster he sounds. I think I much prefer reading his lectures, where I can mentally substitute a proper cambridge accent. The knowledge seems to be absorbed better that way. Also, he walks around too much: this tends to dissipate the focus. But, I do like the antics with his hands/body and facial expressions!
> Still searching for an Rdio substitute though...
After the news about Rdio, I have started to search for a replacement. So far I have tried Spotify, Deezer and Google Play Music.
With respect to the web player, I felt that Google's service is closer to Rdio in listening experience than others. It has a clean interface, search works well, and curated-radio is very good. On the other hand, Spotify desktop app on Linux is OK and would be a good replacement to Rdio web player, but I have not tried any mobile app yet.
