Should You Use Windsurf?

Conclusion

  • Use with Cursor: If there's something Cursor can't handle, try Windsurf—it might work wonders.
  • No Need to Learn It Specifically: The operation is quite similar to Cursor (I’ll write a few tutorials for you).
  • Start with Cursor: Start by checking out my detailed blog tutorial and get Cursor up and running.

Observations

If you're following AI programming, you must have heard about Windsurf recently. There are a lot of videos online, with many claiming that Windsurf surpasses Cursor, is more powerful, and that you should ditch Cursor!

But I’ve been watching from the sidelines. There are two main reasons: First, I think Cursor's basic mode is sufficient, and second, I really don’t understand what "Agent" means.

Regarding the first point, I find the basic mode enough because I can actively build context to help Cursor understand the content. This minimizes bugs, and even if bugs do occur, I can provide more detailed error information to Cursor, reducing the chances of hitting dead ends. I think it's difficult for AI to achieve this on its own.

Last weekend, I used both the agent and Windsurf to complete the same task. I found that both of them are quite similar when it comes to automatically filling in the context, which confirmed my thinking.

Test Case

I had both Cursor Agent and Windsurf do the same thing: write a Windsurf tutorial blog website, mimicking the style of my current blog.

Why did I choose this task? Because "imitating" and "referencing" really test both tools' ability to automatically gather context. They need to first understand my project—my framework, page layout, i18n, directory structure, etc.—and then develop and debug based on that understanding.

Results

After testing, the results were basically the same: neither tool was significantly ahead of the other. Both had numerous bugs, and they were difficult to resolve. Of course, the difference is in the types of errors they made—different bugs each time, haha!

Interestingly, when I handed over an issue that Cursor couldn’t solve after numerous attempts to Windsurf, Windsurf was able to resolve it.

So, you can easily use both tools in tandem. Use Cursor in one hand, Windsurf in the other. Open the same project in both, and let them compete. Whichever tool fixes the bug first is the one that’s impressive.