I’ve been using cursor and I have to say the experience is amazing, if you haven’t tried it yet, you should probably assign some budget and get going since this isn’t stopping soon.
I’ve tried using it for a lot of stuff:
- fast prototyping
- extending a prototype into a more production-like pipeline
- creating a standard visualization of graphs for my presentations while using it together with a Colab Notebook
- creating graphs and mermaid diagrams
- generating a product requirements document and plan
- running scripts on CLI tools that I would probably never have done (like checking out my local docker images to see which one had the required libraries since I was on a low-bandwidth zone and downloading a new image was not possible)
Here’s a list some of the things I have found to be helpful in some of those use cases:
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Frontend: I am currently using Next.JS and when I set up the project, and start working with the Composer it keeps creating things in the root folder while things were actually in the /src folder or vice-versa. This was kind of annoying but once you get through the initial phase (and after moving files to the right place), the development flow is a lot smoother. But be prepared for some initial frustration.
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Backend: tests!!! if you create tests, they protect you from Cursor creating new bugs as your features grow. I can imagine doing Frontend testing would also help a lot, but I think usually the frontend has more frequent changes, so I would rather do this later into the development process.
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Be alert and aware: getting code from an agent or an LLM, quickly becomes too comfortable, but you should check what it’s generating and at least try to understand what it’s proposing. Several times I’ve found Cursor deleting code that was previously working or using a non consistent pattern to solve things it already solved.
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Baby steps: proceed with small changes when working on large features, and use git to commit working versions of your code, if you ask for a lot of things on a single request, Cursor will probably try to comply, and large changes also are a higher risk of breaking something that was previously working, remember: “Divide and Conquer”.
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Composer and agent mode: I still haven’t used this functionality as much as I want, but in general I think it still needs polishing since it works across a lot of files at the same time, and based on what we mention on the previous paragraph, this is always risky.
Future
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I think we need full fledged templates that include both frontend and backend sample code, so Cursor can keep consistency on how to work with our codebase. I know there are amazing compilations of .cursorrules (), and I NEED TO MAKE TIME TO INVESTIGATE AND TRY THEM OUT, since it’s probably a game-changer, and a smart way to spend some time in order to save lot’s of time. I’ll probably take a look at, the Awesome Cursor Rules repository so I can start exploring and evaluating their usefulness.
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Agents can also refactor code… but the refactor goes through different levels in the codebases, i.e. you can refactor your APIs but you’ll probably need to update the endpoints on the frontend too. I would expect complete agentic framework helping you comply with the best practices on api creation and versioning. I’ll probably write a little more about this soon. ( 😉 subscribe to my newsletter!)
FAQ
- Do I still use ChatGPT?
Yes I do!! but working with cursor gives you a lot of flow, that otherwise might be interrupted if you jump back and forth from the IDE to the browser and vice-versa (I am sure there are a lot of plugins to prevent this…. but cursor solves it already. )
- Have I hit the usage limits for my subscription?
Yeah! It have happened a couple of times but no big issues… you just need to wait a little and for most of my requirements Cursor usually can use a fallback llm.
- Is this really the future of no-code for everyone?
I think fundamentals and first principles are still necessary to unleash the power of this agents to a good extent, the good news is: you can use AI agents and llm-based learning tools to get those first principles right… or.. you can join the waitlist for our first principles course with Cursor that we are currently preparing.