[superfrank]

I only switched to using the terminal based agents in the last week. Prior to this I was pretty much only using it through Cursor and GH Copilot. The Anthropic models when used through GH Copilot were far superior to the codex ones and I didn't really get the hype of Codex. Using them through the CLI though, Codex is much better, IMO.

My guess is that it's potentially that and just momentum from developers who started using CC when it was far superior to Codex has allowed it to become so much more popular. Potentially, it's might be that, as it's more autonomous, it's better for true vibe-coding and it's more popular with the Twitter/LinkedIn wantrepreneur crew which meant it gets a lot of publicity which increases adoption quicker.

[jorl17]

Out of curiosity, what do you feel are the key differences between cursor + models versus something like Claude Code/Codex?

Are you feeling the benefits of the switch? What prompted you to change?

I've been running cursor with my own workflows (where planning is definitely a key step) and it's been great. However, the feeling of missing out, coupled with the fact I am a paying ChatGPT customer, got me to try codex. It hasn't really clicked in what way this is better, as so far it really hasn't been.

I have this feeling that supposedly you can give these tools a bit more of a hands-off approach so maybe I just haven't really done that yet. Haven't fiddled with worktrees or anything else yet either.

[oofbey]

AFAICT it really is just a preference for terminal vs IDE. The terminal folks often believe terminal is intrinsically better and say things like “you’re still using an IDE.” Yegge makes this quite explicit in his gastown manifesto.

I been using Unix command lines since before most people here were born. And I actively prefer cursor to the text only coding agents. I like being able to browse the code next to the chat and easily switch between sessions, see markdown rendered properly, etc.

On fundamentals I think the differences are vanishing. They have converged on the same skills format standards. Cursor uses RAG for file lookups but Claude reads the whole file - token efficiency vs completeness. They both seem to periodically innovate some orchestration function which the other copies a few weeks later.

I think it really is just a stylistic preference. But the Claude people seem convinced Claude is better. Having spent a bunch of time analyzing both I just don’t see it.