Why hackers moved from VS Code to Cursor
1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“In 2023 I moved from VS Code to Cursor.”murlax, 2026-08-01original comment ↗
Use VS Code? Get alerted when hackers criticize it.
Tell us the tools in your stack. When hackers start criticizing one of them, or moving to an alternative, you will hear about it first.
VS Code vs Cursor
| VS Code | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 8 | 6 |
| Hackers who criticize | 14 | 12 |
| Moved away from it | 15 | 6 |
| Moved to it | 6 | 3 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of VS Code
“personally switched from VS Code to herdr (with some custom plugins), and couldn't be happier.”falcor84, 2026-10-29original comment ↗
“This is the reason why I switched from VSCode to nvim (AstroNvim to be specific).”Ronsenshi, 2026-06-28original comment ↗
“Recently ditched VSCODE completely and switched from development on local machine to remote "vps" cloud.”throwaway888abc, 2026-06-05original comment ↗
“I switched from VSCode to Zed, which has a helix mode built-in and it works very well.”16bitvoid, 2026-05-13original comment ↗
“using vscodium instead of vscode is again justified.”RandyOrion, 2026-05-03original comment ↗
Praise for Cursor
“now I’m finding Cursor is even better for my coding stuff.”andsoitis, 2026-09-20original comment ↗
“Switched from Intellij (various) to Cursor because of AI integration”KingOfCoders, 2026-02-13original comment ↗
“they care a lot about developer experience.”xiphias2, 2026-02-02original comment ↗
“I'm a non-technical founder who built an entire SaaS frontend using v0 and Cursor over the past year.”Soerensen, 2026-02-02original comment ↗
“I switched from Copilot to Cursor at the end of 2025, and it was absolute night and day in terms of how the agents behaved.”deanc, 2026-01-07original comment ↗