The US under Trump is politically and strategically almost identical to China, and can be trusted about the same.
And then, compared to China, the US acts overtly hostile: threatening us with war, starting a war in order to collapse energy supplies outside of the US.
Opportunistic beyond even China, much more hostile.
Will the US even be a democracy in two years? Is it now?
Nah man, balancing between China and the US is the only thing a smaller country can do in order not to be crushed
Cursor was the tool you use to pair program with AI. Where the AI types the code, and you direct it as you go along. This is a workflow where you work in code and you end up with something fundamentally correct to your standards.
Claude Code is the tool you use if you want to move one abstraction layer up - use harness, specs, verifications etc. to nail down the thing such that the only task left is type in the code - a thing AI does well. This is a workflow where the correctness depends on a lot of factors, but the idea is to abstract one level up from code. Fundamentally, it would be successful if you don't need to look at code at all.
I think there is not enough data to conclusively say which of these two concepts is better, even taking into account some trajectory of model development.
I do feel that any reason I have for installing Cursor is that I want to do workflow 1, rather than workflow 2. Cause I have a pretty comprehensive setup of claude code (or opencode, or whatevs) and I think it does everything you list here.
So, as a product engineer, you probably wanna mention why it matters that Cursor UI allows you to edit files with auto-complete.
Claude Code is where you move up one abstraction layer. Almost everyone using it productively has spend a lot of time working on their harness, ensuring that everything is planned out and structured such that all that is left is really type in the code. This typically works without error. Before that, you interact a lot via Claude Code in whatever abstraction you feel is right.
That's basically it. You can review changes afterwards, but that's not the main point of Claude Code. It's a different workflow. It's built on the premise: given a tight and verifiable plan, AI will execute the actual coding correctly.
This will work, mostly, if you use the very best models with a very good and very specific harness.
Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down.
I have no idea what is better, or faster. I suspect it depends at least on the problem, the AI, and the person.
> Cursor, same as Copilot, has been used by people who are basically pair programming with the AI. So, on abstraction down.
This is not really true anymore.
Cursor has better cloud agents than Claude. The multi-agent experience is better, the worktree management is better. Tagging specific code or files in chat is better.
It's hard for me to express the level of pain and frustration I feel going from Cursor to Claude / Conductor+Claude / Claude Extension for VS Code, Claude in Zed, etc.
Really hoping Claude puts more energy into Cowork as a competitor for Cursor and Codex.
I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging specific code" or "files" is likely the type of interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing.
Instead they are defining architecture through specs and verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't have many prompts with CC referencing files or code directly, rather I speak in specifications I can then track to a given instance of work in review.
This isn't to suggest you can't work at this abstraction in cursor or w/e interface, but the features you suggest are hardly relevant to the divide zwaps is identifying.
I feel like perhaps you haven't used Cursor. I use both CC and Cursor extensively and as far as I can tell there is nothing that the CC agent will do that Cursor won't do just as well (often using Opus as the backend) and at the same time I get the advantage of seeing the changes in a full IDE if I want to. Their new agent-forward UI hides the code if you don't want to see it as much, but I and many others think that it giving me a full, colourful graphical editor to view changes in is a huge advantage.
I'm not telling you to go use cursor, just to help clarify that you can drive both solutions with the exact same approach and skillset and get very similar results - the difference is the UI. I personally like being able to paste screenshots into the agent, etc.
Nobody is saying your workflow is wrong, it may even be better. However it is not how people use Claude Code or what its attraction is.
What you mention as advantages and features is not something CC users use or require.
On the other hand, Claude is trained on its harness (all but confirmed by Anthropic) so CC is likely just a bit better at its level of abstraction than in cursor.
And at the end, you can’t yet best the subscription.
Cursor does the same stuff but better in my opinion. It’s got an IDE focus but whatever agent pipeline they built is better at coding than Claude’s is and much much faster. I routinely fear for my career while using Cursor, but when I use Claude I wonder what all the hype is about.
That’s not to say Claude sucks, but I think Cursor is really underrated and not well known. I think the IDE focus hurts them with non professional developers, but try using it the same as with Claude and you’ll be surprised, I bet. You can hook it up to GitHub and never touch the IDE if you want to.
So that sounds like Claude Code is an inferior subset of Cursor. That Cursor can work like Claude Code, but Claude Code is lacking Cursor’s editing capabilities.
If you install the VS Code plugin, it's the same editing functionality. Cursor lacks a lot of the tooling in claude code that makes the experience a lot more... solid.
It's always funny to see people's reactions to AI because it's the same they would treat junior engineers if nobody was around to raise an eyebrow. I've had a super micromanager who was absolutely insistent on naming variables and whether the open brackets were on the same line or a new line. I've also had people who just gave me the desired functionality and let me figure out the in-between and put in my own creative features, etc with just slight feedback.
We have OG Cursor for the micromanagers (who want to approve/deny every line) and things like Claude Code for those who are less picky about the how, and able to be amazed at what it creates.
Yep. Cursor is remote indexing. It allows their agents to fish around in the code base more efficiently. I assume the Claude folks are working on this.
I like cursor and its workflow as a tool, but I do wonder whether moving to cloud (I mean for lots of the cool features) will work. Yes we all GET Cursor has to make money. No one is fooled what this is about. It's also fine, the video and screenshot thing is great.
This really doesn’t pan out in practice if you work a lot with these models
And also we know why: effective context depends on inout and task complexity. Our best guess right now is that we are often between 100k to 200k effective context length for frontier, 1m NIHS type models
Monarchic customs are always a great source for optimized procedures and best practices, because in these places marginal costs don't matter, people get assigned to particular knowledge areas and the assumption is that quality does matter.
This is one of the criticisms[0] of at least some Great Books curricula. The skew tends too strongly towards the Anglo-American and the “canon” is too rigidly held.
And then, compared to China, the US acts overtly hostile: threatening us with war, starting a war in order to collapse energy supplies outside of the US. Opportunistic beyond even China, much more hostile.
Will the US even be a democracy in two years? Is it now?
Nah man, balancing between China and the US is the only thing a smaller country can do in order not to be crushed
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