Cursor is changing the way we work, creating unprecedented opportunities for developers, product managers, and programming beginners. It enhances coding efficiency through AI technology, lowers entry barriers, while improving code quality and accelerating innovation.

Why Cursor?

The Future of Programming

Tesla CEO Elon Musk once predicted: "In the future, programming languages will disappear. We will communicate directly with computers using natural language." This future might be closer than we imagine.

Looking back at the history of programming, we can see a clear trend: programming is becoming simpler and more accessible. In the early days of computing, only a select few elites could program, mostly rocket engineers or computer scientists. With the emergence of high-level programming languages and the development of various frameworks and IDEs, we've built a vast digital infrastructure that allows even those without formal training to program.

The essence of programming is to solve problems and create. We write code not for the sake of coding itself, but to realize ideas and build solutions. Now, we stand at the threshold of the era of natural language programming. The emergence of AI programming tools is further lowering the barriers to programming, making "everyone a product manager, everyone can create" a possibility.

Learning Cursor is adapting to the future. Let's start with Cursor's core advantages.

Cursor's Core Advantages

Cursor is an editor developed based on VSCode, while most other programming tools are plugins for VSCode. This is its unique starting point, allowing it to creatively build an efficient human-machine collaborative programming environment.

In summary, Cursor's core advantages include:

Natural Language Programming

Cursor has significant advantages in natural language programming, truly realizing the vision of "programming by just speaking":

Intuitive Interactive Programming: Through the Chat interface, users can describe requirements in natural language, and Cursor can understand and translate them into code. Users can gradually refine requirements through dialogue, and Cursor will adjust and optimize the code accordingly, making the programming process more flexible and efficient.
Context Awareness and Multi-language Support: Cursor can understand the overall structure and context of the project, making natural language instructions more precise. It supports multiple programming languages, can automatically select the appropriate language to generate code based on project requirements, and can reference specific files or code segments for more accurate operations.
Code Explanation and Continuous Learning: In addition to generating code, Cursor can explain the functionality and principles of the code, which is very helpful for learning programming or understanding complex code. Through continuous interaction with users, Cursor can learn and adapt to users' programming styles and preferences, providing an increasingly personalized programming experience.

These advantages not only improve programming efficiency but also greatly lower the barriers to programming, bringing the ideal of "everyone can program" closer to reality. Both experienced developers and programming novices can benefit from Cursor's natural language programming capabilities, achieving faster and more intuitive code development processes.

Code Editing

AI can generate code, and Cursor also provides various powerful code editing features that greatly enhance programming efficiency:

1. Tab Auto-completion

Cursor Tab is a powerful native auto-completion feature that goes beyond traditional code completion:

Can suggest edits around the cursor, not just inserting additional code.
Able to modify multiple lines of code simultaneously.
Provides suggestions based on your recent changes and linter errors.

How to use:

Accept suggestion: Press Tab
Reject suggestion: Press Esc or continue typing
Partial acceptance: Press Ctrl/⌘ → to accept word by word

2. Cmd K Inline Editing

With Cmd K (or Ctrl K on Windows/Linux), you can generate new code or edit existing code in the editor window:

Use Cmd K after selecting code for intelligent modifications.
Use Cmd K without selecting code to generate new code.
Supports multi-line editing and inline generation.
Can further optimize generation results by appending instructions.

3. Chat Interface

Through the Chat interface, you can:

Intelligently modify existing code
Perform multi-line edits
Guide AI to modify code
Use the @ symbol to reference context information

4. Composer Feature

Composer is a powerful experimental feature of Cursor that takes AI-assisted programming to a new level:

Multi-file Editing: Composer allows you to create and edit multiple files simultaneously, greatly improving efficiency in handling complex projects.
Full Application Generation: Through simple natural language instructions, Composer can generate the framework for an entire application, including multiple files and a complete project structure.
Interactive Development: You can gradually refine and modify the generated code through dialogue, and Composer will adjust according to your instructions.
Context Understanding: Composer can understand the structure and context of the entire project, making the generated code more aligned with project requirements.

How to use:

Enable Composer: Activate Composer in the Beta section of Cursor settings.
Open Composer: Use the shortcut Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (Windows/Linux).
Full-screen Mode: Use Cmd+Shift+I (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows/Linux) to open the full-screen three-panel mode.

Composer is particularly suitable for rapid prototyping, complex feature implementation, and project refactoring scenarios, significantly improving development efficiency.

5. Terminal Cmd K

In Cursor's built-in terminal, you can use Cmd K (or Ctrl K on Windows/Linux) to:

Open the prompt bar at the bottom of the terminal
Describe the desired terminal operation
Generate corresponding commands
Use Esc to accept the command, or Cmd/Ctrl + Enter to run the command immediately

These features collectively form Cursor's powerful code modification capabilities, making the programming process more efficient and intelligent. Whether writing new code or modifying existing code, Cursor can provide strong support.

Context Reference Capability

Cursor provides powerful context reference capabilities.

Code Snippets: Any code block in the editor can be quickly added to the Chat interface via the floating menu or Cmd/Ctrl + L. The era of copying and pasting to ChatGPT is over; now you can directly reference code.

@ References: Users can quickly access relevant context using the @ symbol and efficiently search the entire project's code through global code retrieval.

Reference files
Reference folders
Reference URLs

Multi-model Support

A key advantage of Cursor is its multi-model support strategy, which keeps it competitive in the rapidly evolving AI field.

Flexibility: Cursor is not limited to a single AI model but can integrate various advanced language models. It can even integrate your own models.
Continuous Updates: As new models are released, Cursor can quickly incorporate them, ensuring users always have access to the most advanced AI technology.
High Adaptability: Different tasks may require different AI models, and multi-model support allows Cursor to provide the best solutions for various programming needs.

It's particularly worth mentioning that with the rapid progress of models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet in programming capabilities, Cursor can quickly integrate these advancements. This flexibility ensures that Cursor maintains a leading position among AI-assisted programming tools.

Next Steps

Cursor provides an efficient, intelligent coding environment that can significantly increase coding speed and help developers better understand and manipulate complex codebases. Although AI Coding tools still face some challenges, they are expected to significantly enhance or even automate engineering work, with a vast market space. If you want to improve coding efficiency and quality, and adapt to future work methods, Cursor is worth trying.

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