Hacker News Reader

Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

I am a senior engineer, I use cursor a lot in my day to day. I find I can code longer and typically faster than without. Is it on par with human? It’s getting pretty darn close to be honest, I am sure the “10x” engineers of the world would disagree but it definitely has surpassed a junior engineer. We all have our anecdotes but I am inclined to believe on average there is net value.

View on HN

I think surpassed is not the right word because it doesn't create/ideate. However it is incredibly resourceful. Maybe like having a jr engineer to do your bidding without thinking or growing.

Surpassed is probably the wrong word but the intent is more that it can comprehend quite complicated algorithms and patterns and apply them to your problem space. So yea it’s not a human but I don’t think saying subpar to a human is the right comparison either. In many ways it’s much better, I can run N parallel revisions and have the best implementation picked for review. This all happens in seconds.

Yes, this. Creating multiple iterations in parallel allows much more meaningful exploration of the solution space. Create a branch for each framework and try them all, compare them directly in praxis not just in theory. My brother is doing this to great effect as a solopreneur, and having the time of his life.

I use AI tools extensively. I have seen it come up with truly novel solutions.

Largely agree. Anything that is just a multi-file edit, like an interface change, it can do. Maybe not immediately, but you can have it iterate, and it doesn't eat up your attention.

It is without a doubt worth more than the 200 bucks a month I spend on it.

I will go as far as to say it has decent ideas. Vanilla ideas, but it has them. I've actually gotten it to come up with algorithms that I thought were industry secrets. Minor secrets, sure. But things that you don't just come across. I'm in the trading business, so you don't really expect a lot of public information to be in the dataset.

A lot of time vanilla ideas and established, well proven patterns are just what the customer ordered. And AI code tools are great at this now.

i'm also a senior engineer and I use codex a lot. It has reduced many of the typical coding tasks to simply writing really good AC. I still have to write good AC, but I'm starting to see the velocity change from using good AI in a smart way.

Senior engineer here as well. I would say Opus 4.5 is easily a mid-level engineer. It's a substantial improvement over Sonnet 4.5, which required a lot more hand-holding and interventions.

i think less. not sure if that's a good thing. but small little bugs and improvements get cleared so quickly now.

it surpassed 30 junior engineers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com