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.