some thoughts after my first day using windsurf. spoiler: i like the icons
I've been using @Spacemacs for a few years now. Recently, I started using @VS Code to "see what I was missing". I liked that linters and such seemed to work a bit smoother out of the box.
I kept hearing:
VSCode is dead, Cursor is the way.
Then I started hearing:
Windsurf is the way, Cursor is dead.
Today I used Windsurf for the full day. Some raw thoughts:
I like the icons!
Treating it like an "op autocomplete" was pretty powerful! It made refactoring and quick changes really really fast.
Asking it to make a bunch of changes doesn't flow well for me yet. I guess it's hard for me to grok the diffs quickly, and it just feels faster to be pushing code around myself. maybe this will change with experience.
When i wanted to "think hard" i found the autocomplete kind of annoying. i was trying to write some weird recursive code with bad variables names to quickly prototype. it would have been nice if I could say "chill out on the autocompletes until i finish this thought", maybe like a toggle somewhere? does this exist already?
the center pop up menu is cool.
how do i make the cascade drawer close from the keyboard? Cmd +B closes the left drawer -- something similar for "cascade" would be good to know.
overall, i enjoyed it. will use again tomorrow.
Good notes.You can toggle autocomplete on and off in Windsurf by clicking 'Windsurf-settings' in the bottom right of the screen or programming these keybindings in your settings file:
{
"key": "",
"command": "windsurf.snoozeAutocomplete"
"key": "",
"command": "windsurf.cancelSnoozeAutocomplete"
}
Tab Slayer
@steveb legend, thank you!
Product Hunt
Have you used Cursor enough to gauge the difference? I'm really curious what the delta is versus Cursor.
Windsurf is nice, but I find that switching between Cursor and Windsurf is a decent flow. I think Windsurf's agent (Cascade) is better implemented, but as the codebase gets bigger, the edit mode (used to be the "normal composer") for Cursor helps me keep a better handle on all the changes the models want to make.
I used both to build Vibe Coder (launched on Product Hunt today), if you're using Windsurf you should check it out. It's an open source VS Code extension that brings Voice input directly into the IDE, for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It has dictation + custom LLM prompt rewrite for inputting into Cascade (or anywhere else!). But my favorite part is the integrated voice agent that can help you brainstorm when you're starting a project, and then you can ask it to generate a project spec based on your conversation, which is key for keeping Cursor and Windsurf on track.
https://youtu.be/WLX6636ASrU