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Comment by dugidugout | Hacker News Reader

I think you are still speaking in the lower abstraction in terms of zwaps' provided understanding. "Tagging specific code" or "files" is likely the type of interfacing most Claude Code users are _not_ doing.

Instead they are defining architecture through specs and verification-loops and attempting to one-shot solutions fitting clear tests. On reflection, I personally don't have many prompts with CC referencing files or code directly, rather I speak in specifications I can then track to a given instance of work in review.

This isn't to suggest you can't work at this abstraction in cursor or w/e interface, but the features you suggest are hardly relevant to the divide zwaps is identifying.

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I feel like perhaps you haven't used Cursor. I use both CC and Cursor extensively and as far as I can tell there is nothing that the CC agent will do that Cursor won't do just as well (often using Opus as the backend) and at the same time I get the advantage of seeing the changes in a full IDE if I want to. Their new agent-forward UI hides the code if you don't want to see it as much, but I and many others think that it giving me a full, colourful graphical editor to view changes in is a huge advantage.

I'm not telling you to go use cursor, just to help clarify that you can drive both solutions with the exact same approach and skillset and get very similar results - the difference is the UI. I personally like being able to paste screenshots into the agent, etc.

Nobody is saying your workflow is wrong, it may even be better. However it is not how people use Claude Code or what its attraction is.

What you mention as advantages and features is not something CC users use or require.

On the other hand, Claude is trained on its harness (all but confirmed by Anthropic) so CC is likely just a bit better at its level of abstraction than in cursor. And at the end, you can’t yet best the subscription.

Cursor does the same stuff but better in my opinion. It’s got an IDE focus but whatever agent pipeline they built is better at coding than Claude’s is and much much faster. I routinely fear for my career while using Cursor, but when I use Claude I wonder what all the hype is about.

That’s not to say Claude sucks, but I think Cursor is really underrated and not well known. I think the IDE focus hurts them with non professional developers, but try using it the same as with Claude and you’ll be surprised, I bet. You can hook it up to GitHub and never touch the IDE if you want to.

> What you mention as advantages and features is not something CC users use or require

See, this is ridiculous nonsense. I can absolutely code in Cursor without seeing the code, and I've used both extensively, and they're remarkably similar. Why would I not want to be able to paste screenshots? Why would I really not want to have an IDE for when it's time to be a Real Engineer and look at the code?

I get it if you can't code and don't know what all those funny punctuation marks mean but it's pretty helpful to be able to e.g. just select germane lines of code and feed them to the agent as context so that it doesn't have to piss away tokens finding it. I guess if you don't even know your codebase at all then you can't do that - but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an advantage to be able to do it, it just means you aren't capable :shrug:

So that sounds like Claude Code is an inferior subset of Cursor. That Cursor can work like Claude Code, but Claude Code is lacking Cursor’s editing capabilities.

If you install the VS Code plugin, it's the same editing functionality. Cursor lacks a lot of the tooling in claude code that makes the experience a lot more... solid.

That is my experience currently.

Yes and no. In principle you are right.

In practice, Claude is trained on its harness and the subscription is priced to best competitors such as Cursor.

This is also why Cursor tries to finetune oss models. Otherwise its performance in the CC flavor of AI coding will just be that bit worse

It's always funny to see people's reactions to AI because it's the same they would treat junior engineers if nobody was around to raise an eyebrow. I've had a super micromanager who was absolutely insistent on naming variables and whether the open brackets were on the same line or a new line. I've also had people who just gave me the desired functionality and let me figure out the in-between and put in my own creative features, etc with just slight feedback.

We have OG Cursor for the micromanagers (who want to approve/deny every line) and things like Claude Code for those who are less picky about the how, and able to be amazed at what it creates.

I treat people with respect because they are people. Absolutely not the case for machines.

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