Cursor is an AI-based code editor that is a fork on VSCode with AI integrations. It’s currently the fastest growing SaaS company of all time, and if you have ever used it, you can understand why. Me and a bunch of my friends are all programmers and when we discovered Cursor it was like discovering an organ you never knew you had.
Before Cursor, the natural progression of a developer’s career slowly took you away from writing code. Principal Engineers handled architecture and direction. Senior Engineers refined designs and supervised teams. Junior Engineers were the ones actually typing. As you “grew,” you coded less and less. Instead, you managed, reviewed, and optimized more.
But with Cursor, that entire structure flips. I can prompt complex architectural changes, watch the AI generate refactors across multiple files, and approve or reject them in seconds. It’s like every developer has their own Junior Engineers and the user is the Senior Engineer. You don’t write code anymore, rather you are the captain of the ship and giving instructions to the pilot.
It’s empowering, but also strange. The craft that used to demand patience and late-night debugging sessions now feels like conducting an orchestra of logic. Sometimes I wonder if the next generation of developers will ever experience what it feels like to truly write code. I remember there would be some nights where I literally spent hours fixing a bug that was caused by one missing semi-colon or exclamation point. Maybe that’s progress. Maybe it’s evolution. But part of me wonders if we’re trading craftsmanship for speed. If we’re slowly forgetting what it means to build things the hard way.
Or maybe I am being biased. Each generation of developers builds on easier tools. Before, you coded with almost no guidance. Then came textbooks, then Stack Overflow, and now we have five-billion-parameter models that can think at the speed of light. But problem-solving never really disappears. As the tools get better, so does the necessity for the wielder to be better.
I get what you mean about trading craftsmanship for speed. Personally, I think it’s a fair trade not just Cursor but also other tools open the door for people with less technical knowledge to start building things too. It lowers the entry barrier and makes coding feel more like problem-solving than memorizing syntax. Sure, we lose a bit of that grind, but I’d say it’s worth it if it means more people can turn their ideas into something real. I feel like now we will have more generalists rather than specialists – is it really that bad?