Lately, I’ve been checking out some next-level AI-powered IDEs—Cursor, Windsurf, and Roo—and thought I’d share my thoughts, including what I love and what could use some improvement.
Cursor
I dove into Cursor because it promised to make coding smoother with AI. It’s cool, no doubt about it, and does a decent job making life easier. But there’s one thing that kept tripping me up: the whole “credits” thing. Imagine you’re ripping through the desert in an awesome race car, totally vibing, and suddenly you see your fuel gauge close to empty. Mood killer, right? That’s how the credit system feels—just when you hit your stride, you gotta refill again.
Windsurf
Now, Windsurf shares the same credit-based setup, but honestly, I enjoyed using it more. The UI is slicker, everything just flows better. It feels less like an interruption—at least until your credits run low. Still, as an indie entrepreneur, start-up vibe guy or someone on a small team, this setup isn’t ideal. If you’ve got deep pockets, sure, it works. But for solo devs grinding out passion projects, it can be limiting. You get maybe an hour or two of focused work before you’re watching your credits dwindle.
Roo: The Freemium Savior
That’s where Roo comes in. It’s the freemium solution, the one indie devs like me naturally gravitate towards. It may not have all the bells and whistles out of the box, but the pricing (or lack thereof) makes it the scalable choice for small dev teams and solo projects.
What’s Out There?
And hey, it’s not just these three. Google is dropping its own IDE—Project IDX—which looks super promising and might shake things up. GitHub Copilot integrated with VSCode, JetBrains’ Fleet, and AWS Cloud9 are also on the radar, each bringing their own strengths to the game.
The Road Ahead and Open Source Magic
Honestly, Cursor and Windsurf need to step it up to stay relevant in the long run. The indie dev community won’t stick around if something better pops up—especially something open-source and community-driven. Think about it: an AI coding another AI to expand functionality is like planting seeds and suddenly having a whole forest grow effortlessly. That’s the dream, and it’s totally achievable.
So, to sum it up: Cursor and Windsurf are cool, especially for bigger teams with resources. Roo feels like the right choice for smaller devs, and I can’t wait to see how open-source projects or giants like Google reshape the future of IDEs. Exciting times ahead!