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Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

When I tried Copilot the "better tab complete" felt quite annoying, in that the constantly changing suggested completion kept dragging my focus away from what I was writing. That clearly doesn't happen for you. Was that something you got used to over time, or did that just not happen for you? There were elements of it I found useful, but I just couldn't get over the flickering of my attention from what I was doing to the suggested completions.

Edit: I also really want something that takes the existing codebase in the form of a VSCode project / GitHub repo and uses that as a basis for suggestions. Does Copilot do that now?

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I tried to get used to the tab completion tools a few times but always found it distracting like you describe. often I’d have a complete thought, start writing the code, get a suggested completion, start reading it, realize it was wrong, but then I’d have lost my initial thought, or at least have to pause and bring myself back to it.

I have, however, fully adopted chat-to-patch style workflows like Aider, I find it much less intrusive and distracting than the tab completions, since I can give it my entire thought rather than some code to try to complete.

I do think there’s promise in more autonomous tools, but they still very much fall into the compounding-error traps that agents often do at the present.

I have the automatic suggestions turned off. I use a keybind to activate it when I want it.

> existing codebase in the form of a VSCode project / GitHub repo and uses that as a basis for suggestions

What are you actually looking for? Copilot uses "all of github" via training, and your current project in the context.

> I have the automatic suggestions turned off. I use a keybind to activate it when I want it.

I didn't realise you could do that. Might give it another go.

> Copilot uses "all of github" via training, and your current project in the context.

The current project context is the bit I didn't think it had. Thanks!

For cursor you can chat and ask @codebase and it will do rag (or equivalent) to answer your question

Copilot is also very slow. I'm surprised people use it to be honest. Just use Cursor.

Cursor requires you to use their specific IDE though, doesn't it? With Copilot I don't have to switch contexts as it lives in my Jetbrains IDE.

It's just vscode. I greatly prefer vim but the difference between vim + ai tools and cursor is just a no brainer in terms of productivity. Cursor isn't without problems but it's leagues ahead of the competition in my opinion.

I've been tempted to try Cursor because of vocal fans like yourself. Then I went to their website and forums yesterday. I am no longer tempted.

Can you say more?

pricing model, downtime, model support, pricing model, trying to take over the experience rather than assist within my experience. This last one is big, because Cursor wants to "reimagine" how developers work. The problem is the AIs are so far from being competent, they need to be kept on the sidelines and sub'd in occasionally, not be the quarterback. Oh, did I mention pricing model?

It's a cost per month, supports the top models (tbh sonnet 3.5 is the key model) and is VS code + some more UI.

> trying to take over the experience rather than assist within my experience

I'm not sure I understand. It's got autocomplete, chat, asking it to change files, but it's vscode plus some stuff. What's it "taking over"?

It doesn't sound like you have a good understanding of cursor based on your comments. I'd suggest giving the trial a shot.

Because of the complaints? If so, yeah I get it. I'm there amongst them. It's kind of like Tesla FSD. There are often setbacks in releases and they definitely need to work on their communication with the community. That said, for the current price it's still worth any misgivings.

The price is one of the issues I have with this space more generally.

I do not want to pay $20/m for a capped experience

I want to pay $10/m to support development, and pay for my AI usage on my own, per request, by choosing my own model and provider

If I was going to shell out money, it would be for Copilot, not Cursor. I prefer my AI to be a side dish, not the main course or core experience

You can use the free version and bring your own api keys if you want. You miss out on features that require cursors models.

It is worth trying.

It is just a fashion choice though with UI.

Personally, I just prefer the chat interface directly with no Cursor UI.

For me, the best way is to write my prompt in a txt file, away from anything to do with LLMs. The bottleneck is not the update of the files like Cursor is good at.

The bottleneck is the clarity of my thoughts.

I looked at your website.

How to get past Barry Schwartz ideas is the main problem that we face in 2025.

The Godel, Escher, Bach stuff to me is just nonsense. As a huge Bach fan boy it is from when Bach was massively overrated in cultural importance.

Hierarchy Theory? How about O-information?

Doesn't seem the O-information wiki entry exists, yet.

I would try cursor. It’s pretty good at copy pasting the relevant parts of the codebase in and out of the chat window. I have the tab autocomplete disabled.

Cursor tab does that. Or at least, it takes other open tabs into account when making suggestions.

i’ve been very impressed with the gemini autocomplete suggestions in google colab, and it doesn’t feel more/less distracting than any IDEs built in tab suggestions

I think a lot of people who are enabling copilot in vs code (like I did a few days ago), are experiencing "suggested autocomplete as I type" for the first time where before there was no grey text below what I am writing personally.

It is a huge distraction, especially if it changes as I write more. I turned it off almost immediately.

I deeply regret turning on copilot in vscode. It (M$) immediately weaseled into so many places and settings. I'm still trying to scaled it back. Super annoying and distracting. I'd prefer a much more opt in for each feature than what they did.

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