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GitHub Copilot vs Cursor vs… GitHub Copilot was the first tool to use AI to help with coding, back in the smart autocomplete era. It took me a while to start using it — how can a machine write code better than me? But after a friend strongly recommended it, I fell in love with it. Then other competitors started appearing. They kept adding new features to Copilot, but spread themselves too thin — too many weird features (look for the sparkle button in random places and try to guess what it does). As a result, they didn’t do any one thing particularly well. It also took them a looong time to add a CLI interface. AIDER was one of those early tools. It was the first CLI AI tool. It was clunky — models were not as good back then. But it showed the first signs of being able to do autonomous edits. It got things working, but the code quality wasn’t the best. And being first in a domain comes with a cost — they were stuck with architectural choices that didn’t scale well, eventually lost relevance, and development stopped. At some point, Cursor became the highly favored startup. It works really well — but it required using their IDE. Back then, AI agents were not good enough to replace an IDE, and for Python, nothing beats PyCharm. Then Claude Code appeared. I remember blowing $15 in a couple of hours using it. Initially, it felt like a slot machine — will I get good code this time? But what kept me using Claude Code is the strong integration between the model and the environment. Anthropic builds both, so Claude models work best there, because they’re trained to use it. The same model in another app performs slightly worse. I also use Codex (mostly when I run out of my Claude subscription). It’s pretty good, but it has a colder personality, so I don’t enjoy it as much. I’ve tried Google’s tools too. First off, Gemini has a somewhat depressive personality (if it keeps failing at a task, it might say it will delete itself — https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2025/08/08/google-fixing-bug-that-makes-gemini-ai-call-itself-disgrace-to-planet/). And Antigravity (their IDE) is an example of poor vibe coding. Unusable. What about you — which AI coding tools have you actually found useful so far? |
Machine Learning Consulting