Cursor Makes Me Faster—but Is It Making Me a Worse Developer?

Short summary

A developer reflects on whether Cursor is improving productivity at the cost of engineering judgment. The author distinguishes between execution tasks (boilerplate, syntax, tests) that AI handles well and judgment tasks (architecture, security, validation) that developers must retain. They propose deliberate practices: writing down constraints before asking AI, investigating bugs manually first, and ensuring they can explain every change made.

• •Cursor dramatically speeds up execution but may erode engineering judgment if used carelessly
• •Author distinguishes outsourcing execution (good) from outsourcing judgment (dangerous)
• •Proposes deliberate practices: pre-planning, manual debugging first, and explaining every AI-generated change

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.