I was "early" in agentic coding. Here's my story
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Since you started early (crazy that this was not long ago), the things you could do were very different to the things one can do now.
How differently do you work now vs say in the beginning?
I guess I can't ask it without leading - how different is your style of working because you work through a different physical medium which forced you organize your thoughts more (audio) and how is it different (recent-ish) now because the models gained power?
How differently do you work now vs say in the beginning?
I guess I can't ask it without leading - how different is your style of working because you work through a different physical medium which forced you organize your thoughts more (audio) and how is it different (recent-ish) now because the models gained power?
The chunks are larger. At the beginning I had to outline in detail really small chunks of code for it to write. I had to repeat how I named things so it wouldn't rename things or change naming conventions. I had a much higher "Reject" ratio. I think I can see this on my cursor dashboard - but I rejected over 50% of what it created in the first few months.
Now I accept a lot more - part of that is going with the vibes as they say. I still read my code, but I feel less particular about it. Because it doesn't make mistakes like renaming things, I tolerate other things.
Like everyone else I feel like my process is different every week. I think the main difference is I've had a lot more time to make my "peace" with this way of working. When I lost my hands my only alternative was dictating character by character. I feel deep gratitude for this technology, which eclipses any anxiety or frustration that bubbles up. The debate is still strong here with many people saying it only produces slop, etc. It's like watching people go through the stages of grief. And I guess I've reached acceptance. I may come off as an 'advocate' but I think I am neutral on agentic coding. It's a new modality. It has pros and cons.
Now I accept a lot more - part of that is going with the vibes as they say. I still read my code, but I feel less particular about it. Because it doesn't make mistakes like renaming things, I tolerate other things.
Like everyone else I feel like my process is different every week. I think the main difference is I've had a lot more time to make my "peace" with this way of working. When I lost my hands my only alternative was dictating character by character. I feel deep gratitude for this technology, which eclipses any anxiety or frustration that bubbles up. The debate is still strong here with many people saying it only produces slop, etc. It's like watching people go through the stages of grief. And I guess I've reached acceptance. I may come off as an 'advocate' but I think I am neutral on agentic coding. It's a new modality. It has pros and cons.
I still have the cursor unlimited plan that gives me unlimited tokens. It expires in May after which Cursor is forcing all of us legacy users onto the new plans where you do have to pay for tokens. So May of last year is when I got my yearly plan, but before that I was paying monthly for a couple of months. It was October 2024 when I started.
I adopted them because I lost the ability to type.
Before all of this, in early 2024, I was curious about AI coding- hearing (probably fake) stories about people building production apps and getting revenue, and I used chatGPT here and there to clean up a function for me, but I never took it seriously.
I downloaded Cursor, tried it once, and abandoned it. It tripped over itself when I asked it to do a simple thing.
Then, two months later, I was using Cursor every day. A change that happened overnight.
It started when my right hand started hurting. I thought I had carpal tunnel.
Then my left hand started hurting too.
The pain got worse. I called my mom asking if I ever had chicken pox, wondering if it could be shingles. I was Googling symptoms nonstop.
Then the weakness started. At first it was subtle, clumsier hands, lower dexterity. My arms were starting to be difficult to lift.
A few more days passed and I could not open my front door anymore.
I was slowly becoming paralyzed. I went to the ER and I was diagnosed with Guillane-Barre Syndrome. (pronounced GHEE-YAWN-BAR-"eh?")
Thankfully, I ended up with a mild case. They let me go home after a week in the hospital. Still, it took months to recover the dexterity in my hands, and the ability to type.
People I work with from that time probably remember my sudden increase in voice notes, speech-to-text, and lots of typos.
When it came to coding, I switched from VSCode to Cursor overnight.
And I was doing it all through voice-to-text.
I tolerated the mistakes.
I rejected code it generated very often.
I got much better at prompting and organizing my thoughts.
I got better at dictating and enunciating so that speech-to-text would stop misunderstanding me.
It was my only option.
It took 6 months to be able to type "normally" again but I will likely never regain my previous speed and accuracy.
I still use Cursor today. Now, I will write code more often, but Cursor is still my primary IDE, and I still prompt more than code directly.
I've since used Claudecode and other tools, but I still like Cursor the best. I wonder how I will feel when when my unlimited tokens are gone. :)
Anyway, that's my story. Feel free to ask me anything.