The entire workflow for "AI coding agents" boils down to:
1. You write a prompt
2. The agent wraps it in a system prompt and sends it to the LLM
3. The LLM sends back a response
4. The agent performs specific actions based on that response (editing files, creating new ones, etc.)
I don't see why anyone would ditch their current (non-AI) IDE for Cursor just to get this functionality (especially if you're getting hit with a monthly subscription fee on top of it.)
P.S. I maintain a VS Code extension that does the 4 steps above as a baseline[1]
1) Popularity. While there are plenty of die-on-a-hill users for ____ app, there are just as many people who will step away to try something and find they like it. Lots of devs use VScode, but its only been around for 10 years. Some people still swear by Notepad++
2) Demand from on-high: When the non-tech boss shows up and says "Everyone use this now". I don't know how much this happens, but it does happen. Technical dictates from someone who shouldn't be making the decision, probably for a non-technical reason.
3) I hesitate to bring this one up, but here we go: People don't know any better. There is a new generation of developers coming up who are leaning hard into vibe coding. And just when I was young, there are plenty of seasoned developers crying out about it's validity. The new generation will pick their own tools - in part to distance themselves from the current generation.
As someone who has basically been told by the boss "I'm the one pushing for AI, so we all have to make it a success" I can see 2 being a thing because it lets them point at the desks and say "see, they're all using the tools."
We're a JetBrains shop, so they showed us Cursor and how to set up Claude in a terminal window, and I think most of our team has been using Claude because we don't want to give up the experience we're used to for the non-AI parts of the day.
I've been very happy with VSCode + Gemini 2.5 (a recentish integration). I will re-evaluate Cursor again but I can't imagine they're going to be able to beat Microsoft to the punch.
After trying a lot of them, the need for a real ide is even stronger. Every single tool I've tried creates bugs, unrequired code, mistakes, hallucinations. Currently playing with Junie and Augment, and CoPilot holds up surprisingly well, not sure why people are so eager to ditch it.
Why do people pay for water bottles when it comes out of the sink for free? Why do people use Dropbox when you could just mount a filesystem with curlftpfs? Why do people pay for Docusign or Postman or Duolingo?
Cursor has consistently felt faster and easier to use with better inline auto-complete and faster large edits in chat than VSCode ever did. The way suggestions and chat is shown is just a bit easier to read and more elegantly presented.
The entire workflow for "AI coding agents" boils down to:
1. You write a prompt
2. The agent wraps it in a system prompt and sends it to the LLM
3. The LLM sends back a response
4. The agent performs specific actions based on that response (editing files, creating new ones, etc.)
I don't see why anyone would ditch their current (non-AI) IDE for Cursor just to get this functionality (especially if you're getting hit with a monthly subscription fee on top of it.)
P.S. I maintain a VS Code extension that does the 4 steps above as a baseline[1]
[1] https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode