The AI coding tools overview really clarifies what's actually working in practice versus what's just marketing buzz! When managing e-commerce platforms, I've found the biggest productivity gains come not from using every shiny new AI tool, but from strategically selecting the right ones for specific workflows.
That distinction between "AI as helper" versus "AI as teammate" is crucial - especially when dealing with complex integrations where incorrect code could impact customer transactions. I've been experimenting with Cursor alongside Claude for specific e-commerce tasks, and the combination is remarkably effective for processing product data while maintaining human oversight. Check out my recent exploration of this exact approach to building specialized solutions: https://thoughts.jock.pl/p/build-internal-digital-solutions-fast-no-coding-required
Right, you don't need every new tool on the market, you just need the tools that work well for you and actually make you more productive. I've been using Cursor + ChatGPT combo now for some time and I like it. It works well for me for coding.
For pure researching, especially when I am researching for articles that I write, that's different and I use Perplexity mostly for that.
Great to hear about your experience with Cursor and Claude. I heard good things about Gemini 2.5 as well. Thanks also for sharing the article.
I've also been using Cursor a lot over the past few months along with that crazy version of ChatGPT with all the unlimited capabilities.
Generally speaking I am blown away with what Cursor has to offer although there are two things about it that make me go to some other solutions sometimes. One is that when I use agent mode it almost always crashes my machine at some point because of the compute power. The other issue is that on more complex projects it tends to get stuck in rabbit holes and circular responses with suggestions. When I pair it with an OpenAI coding GPT it tends to do pretty well though.
Thanks for sharing this Eric. Personally, I haven’t had crashes apart of some occasional, but probably not related due to computing. With getting stuck yes, I saw it do that if you give too much freedom to choose the solution. But works a lot better if you create a lot more descriptive prompts. Appreciate your insights!
ChatGPT and Claude are both products and so are Cursor, Windsurf and also Copilot. Just the difference is that the first two are in the AI-chat space, Cursor and Windsurf being full blown IDEs and Copilot in our case being a plug-in to the IDE.
Fair point regarding the differences, but all are/can be used for coding or other problem-solving purposes.
I was contemplating either go with just the title: Top AI tools..., but then decided to add "coding" in there to make it a bit less broad, because there are SO many AI products currently available in the market.
I left cursor recently as I can stand the VSCode interface and the AI would stampede to change things outside of the context scope. It was constantly under food and providing overly complex solutions. Despite setting cursorrules, it would ignore them and continue on its reckless abandon apologizing all the time.
Thanks, glad you liked it Shiv! And appreciate the insight on Cline. I haven't personally tried it, but would be interesting to see the differences/similarities with Cursor/Windsurf and Copilot.
The AI coding tools overview really clarifies what's actually working in practice versus what's just marketing buzz! When managing e-commerce platforms, I've found the biggest productivity gains come not from using every shiny new AI tool, but from strategically selecting the right ones for specific workflows.
That distinction between "AI as helper" versus "AI as teammate" is crucial - especially when dealing with complex integrations where incorrect code could impact customer transactions. I've been experimenting with Cursor alongside Claude for specific e-commerce tasks, and the combination is remarkably effective for processing product data while maintaining human oversight. Check out my recent exploration of this exact approach to building specialized solutions: https://thoughts.jock.pl/p/build-internal-digital-solutions-fast-no-coding-required
Right, you don't need every new tool on the market, you just need the tools that work well for you and actually make you more productive. I've been using Cursor + ChatGPT combo now for some time and I like it. It works well for me for coding.
For pure researching, especially when I am researching for articles that I write, that's different and I use Perplexity mostly for that.
Great to hear about your experience with Cursor and Claude. I heard good things about Gemini 2.5 as well. Thanks also for sharing the article.
I've also been using Cursor a lot over the past few months along with that crazy version of ChatGPT with all the unlimited capabilities.
Generally speaking I am blown away with what Cursor has to offer although there are two things about it that make me go to some other solutions sometimes. One is that when I use agent mode it almost always crashes my machine at some point because of the compute power. The other issue is that on more complex projects it tends to get stuck in rabbit holes and circular responses with suggestions. When I pair it with an OpenAI coding GPT it tends to do pretty well though.
Thanks for sharing this Eric. Personally, I haven’t had crashes apart of some occasional, but probably not related due to computing. With getting stuck yes, I saw it do that if you give too much freedom to choose the solution. But works a lot better if you create a lot more descriptive prompts. Appreciate your insights!
Great article! :)
Cursor being higher than Windsurf is an interesting idea. Need to go back to Cursor, maybe it got better lately 🤔
I’ve definitely been enjoying Cursor lately. Thanks, glad you like the article!
I think you are mixing things up.
OpenAi ChatGPT and Athrophic Sonnet3.5/3.7 are (the underlying) AI models.
Cursor, Windsurf, ... are IDE (the user interface) which call the AI models for coding tasks.
Two totally different things.
ChatGPT and Claude are both products and so are Cursor, Windsurf and also Copilot. Just the difference is that the first two are in the AI-chat space, Cursor and Windsurf being full blown IDEs and Copilot in our case being a plug-in to the IDE.
Fair point regarding the differences, but all are/can be used for coding or other problem-solving purposes.
I was contemplating either go with just the title: Top AI tools..., but then decided to add "coding" in there to make it a bit less broad, because there are SO many AI products currently available in the market.
I left cursor recently as I can stand the VSCode interface and the AI would stampede to change things outside of the context scope. It was constantly under food and providing overly complex solutions. Despite setting cursorrules, it would ignore them and continue on its reckless abandon apologizing all the time.
Thanks for sharing this Garth!
Giving webstorm a try again with the nascent junie
Great article. At work, lately I am really enjoying Cline.
Thanks, glad you liked it Shiv! And appreciate the insight on Cline. I haven't personally tried it, but would be interesting to see the differences/similarities with Cursor/Windsurf and Copilot.
Glad you like it!