Maybe I'm wrong. But I just don't see it. I see it greatly increasing the productivity of developers, and removing the need for certain tasks, but not removing the need for them entirely.
I’ve been using Cursor for a month or two, as it’s a great speedup and a big step forward in DX. I’ve also been periodically browsing r/cursor, to see if I can pick up any workflow tips. I can see a clear distinction between fellow devs using it as a powerful coding tool (as intended), and the no-code folks trying to use it as an application generator.
A few of the latter have some success and showcase the things they’ve built, but the majority who post on the subreddit vent similar frustrations :
- Trying to build an app one tab press at a time without understanding the code, so unable to fix inevitable problems when chat is unable to.
- Relying heavily on the Composer or Agent features, which sometimes merrily erases chunks of code or entire files. Unable to recover work because unaware of Local History or VCS.
- Running out of fast response credits because 500 are bundled per month. The ideal workflow is to give harder things to Claude or O1, and delegate easier things to gpt4o-mini (which is unmetered). But that only helps if you know which tasks are harder or easier.
It’s not, obviously, but I wouldn’t want to be in the bottom 50% … you can end up being the person who fixes the LLM-generated code but that’s awful.
Just like there are lots of layoffs now, but also many areas of new growth, it’s hard to imagine how the opportunities will evaporate.
Stay flexible and don’t drink the “end of the dev” kool-aid. Don’t paint yourself into a corner - especially not a corner that is ripe for LLM-efficiency takeover.