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Ask HN: Cursor vs. Windsurf?

10 points by shrisukhani ↗ HN
Do you use an AI IDE? Which one and why?

There’s a bunch of them at this point and it’s kinda hard to figure out one over another. Cursor and Windsurf seem like the leading players - curious what people like about one vs the other.

12 comments

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shrisukhani
I’m a happy Cursor user. Main reason is it just works great and was the first one I tried.
surrTurr
use windsurf (or codeium) if you want to put up with cringe hard limits on prompts etc.

imo cursor all the way

OriginalMrPink
It was Cursor six months ago, VC with Copilot three months ago, and currently it's Windsurf / Cursor. Copilot is lagging with features, it used to be Chat & Compose, now it's Agents and MCP stuff that's missing. But once it's in there, it just seems more robust and better integrated with everything imo.
ai_coder42
They're all playing a catchup game with each other on features. Some like GH Copilot is really falling behind as of right now. I use cursor because i like how things are set up makes sense to me.

My recommendation: Try both. I mean really give them a fair chance, atleast 2 weeks. and see which one you like. Happy coding!

olibaw
This isn't shockingly original advice, but it did spur me to stop overthinking it and just spend some time with 'em. Tx!
senordevnyc
I really wish there was something as good as Cursor for Jetbrains.
ai_coder42
They did announce Junie. Close enough to cursor i feel. Link: https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/

But, what is stopping you from moving from Jetbrains to Cursor or the likes? AFAIK, most of the functionality can be achieved via plugins / extensions on Cursor.

Just Curious.

decide1000
I use Cursor, switch to Jetbrains to validate the code.

I don't like the VScode ui. It feels more like a 1 solution-fits-all. Jetbrains has much deeper understanding of the (debug) tools I use.

Happy customer for 4 years.

aristofun
Because vs code is just far inferior IDE in comparison to jetbrains.

They (ms) went a long way in customization, bells and whistles, but haven’t yet nailed the basics.

Most of really experienced developers i know hate it.

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gardenhedge
I just use vs code and a AI chat like grok or deepseek
TiredOfLife
IMHO best feature of these things is the autocomplete. And Windsurf has that feature for free including the Cursor like Tab Tab (supercomplete in Windsurf)