Cursor Changed How I Code Forever — And I'm Not Going Back to VS Code

The IDE Revolution Is Here

I've used VS Code for 7 years. It was my home. My extensions, my keybindings, my theme — all meticulously curated. Switching editors felt like changing apartments.

Then I tried Cursor for a week. That week turned into 6 months, and I'm never going back.

This isn't a sponsored post. I'm paying full price like everyone else. I'm writing this because the productivity difference is so dramatic that I feel an obligation to tell other engineers.

My Daily Workflow

I rarely lean on big block comments or "write a paragraph above the function and hit Cmd+K." That pattern demos well in tweets; in real work it is too slow and too local. What I actually use is agentic coding: one clear goal in chat, the agent reads the repo, touches multiple files, runs checks, and I review diffs before merge.

A typical slice looks like: "Add a FastAPI upload endpoint for PDFs—PyMuPDF extract, 512-token chunks with 50 overlap, OpenAI embed, store in pgvector; match existing DocumentChunk patterns." The agent proposes the route, wiring, and tests; I fix the one or two places where context was thin. Naming and imports stay consistent because the tool is scoped to the codebase, not a blank file.

# What I end up shipping (after review)—not written line-by-line by hand:
@app.post("/api/documents/upload")
async def upload_document(
    file: UploadFile = File(...),
    db: AsyncSession = Depends(get_db),
):
    if file.content_type != "application/pdf":
        raise HTTPException(400, "Only PDF files accepted")

    content = await file.read()
    doc = fitz.open(stream=content, filetype="pdf")
    text = "".join(page.get_text() for page in doc)

    chunks = chunk_text(text, max_tokens=512, overlap=50)
    embeddings = await embed_batch(chunks)

    for chunk, embedding in zip(chunks, embeddings):
        db.add(
            DocumentChunk(
                content=chunk,
                embedding=embedding,
                filename=file.filename,
            )
        )

    await db.commit()
    return {"chunks": len(chunks), "filename": file.filename}

The Features That Matter

1. Agents with repo context. They search, edit across files, and run commands—closer to a patient junior than a single-line completer.
2. Codebase-aware completions. Tab still matters for the last 20% when you are already in flow.
3. Multi-file refactors. "Fix this auth flow across all 12 files" is an agent-shaped task, not a keystroke contest.
4. Inline diffs. Every change is reviewable before it lands; that is non-negotiable for agent output.

The Honest Downsides

• Cost adds up. $20/month for Pro, plus API costs for heavy usage.
• Sometimes confidently wrong. Particularly with newer libraries or custom abstractions.
• Privacy concerns. Your code is sent to cloud models. Not ideal for every company.

But the productivity gain outweighs all of these. If you are still treating the editor like a typewriter in 2026—no agent loop, no structured review—you are leaving most of the leverage on the table.