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Tim Hiebenthal's avatar

What has been a gamechanger compared to Github Copilot (which I used the previous year) is that you can

* actively manage the context if needed (add / remove files)

* overwrite existing lines of code instead of just doing smart "autocomplete"

* multi-file edits

As you said: Github is now under pressure to deliver and announced an "agent-mode", but I'm already out of my license. Things are turning so fast

What's your stance on the 70% problem?

https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-about

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Andy Goldschmidt's avatar

Thanks Tim for sharing your experience and the link!

I, personally, didn't encounter the 70% problem yet. But admittedly my projects are small-scope so I might get away with it. However, I noticed that the quality of your prompt is crucial and you need to be very specific in what you want and you need to know the right jargon for the tool you're using. E.g. when building a website it made a big difference if asking for a menu or a navbar.

Considering this, I'm pretty sure there are things that Cursor just can't do for you and where you need to take over - my gut feeling is the 70% problem is rather a 90-95% problem. Often it helps to restore an old checkpoint/commit and try again - as I mention in the article, if Cursor fails it tends to fail spectacularly.

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