If there’s one area where generative AI has shown its potential, it’s software development. Programmers from all over the world They’ve already made these tools a fundamental part of their daily lives, and now a new platform goes even further. It’s called Cursor, and it makes programming trivial for developers and non-developers alike.

Cursor. This is the name of the fork of Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to which its creators have added all sorts of AI functionality for the “assisted programming” mode, where developers almost no longer have to “cut the code”: just specify what you want to do. Extensive work is needed to get this development environment up and running right away.

What does my code do? One of Cursor’s main options is to analyze your code so you can ask it anything about it. If you have questions about a specific function or a specific part of the program, or if you want to document it better, Cursor helps you better understand the entire project.

Tab-tab-tab. But undoubtedly one of the most remarkable features of Cursor is its ability to anticipate the next editing task. Once you tell it what to do, just press Tab repeatedly to see Cursor write the code on its own and complete the task. Programmers and experts who use it say that its accuracy in “anticipating” what you’ll need for each subsequent code edit is amazing.

The man who whispered to AI. It’s surprising to see Cursor in action in the example given by developer Mckay Wrigley, one of those who tested Cursor with a differential element: the commands telling Cursor what to do are no longer even given by typing. Instead, it “talked” to the machine to give instructions, although sometimes it was better to copy and paste error messages so Cursor could analyze and fix them.

Program (and edit) in natural language. Programmers need to have deep knowledge of the syntax and constructs of each programming language in order to use it successfully, but with Cursor this is no longer so necessary because one can express oneself in natural language to explain to Cursor what one wants to do in code. For example “Parallelize this because the API is slow”.

Investment betThe company responsible for Cursor recently closed an investment round of $60 million, which brought its valuation to $400 million. The main protagonist of the round was the well-known venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose managers emphasized that among all solutions of this kind, “Cursor simply did it right.”

Image | Chris Ried

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