Tools

I’ve been playing around with Cursor and Windsurf, because I keep seeing on social media how great these tools are and how easy it is to build things. And you know what? It’s…. ummm… better than before? Okay, look, it’s impressive. If I compare it so some earlier versions of the IDEs and other tools like Bolt.new, sure, it’s improved. But sheesh, does it take poking and prodding and coddling to get somewhere. Maybe I’m using it wrong, I don’t know, but I wish I could share the transcripts of my chats with these tools so you’ll understand… (can I export those? am I missing a feature somewhere?) ...

Over a year ago a wrote a post about how I felt that, even though ChatGPT was making me more productive, I also felt it was making me lazier and dumber. Since then, I’ve been a lot more intentional about how I use AI tools, in particular generative AI tools and coding assistants. It should be a multiplier, not a replacement or crutch, which is something I see juniors and non-developers struggle with the most, but clearly we can all fall prey too. ...