My experience using VSCode (GitHub Copilot) and Cursor (Claude 3.5 Sonnet) as a Data Scientist.
As developers, we’re constantly searching for tools to enhance our productivity and make coding more enjoyable. I have been using Visual Studio Code (VSCode) for over six years, it has been the go-to integrated development environment (IDE) for almost all the developers I have worked with.
In 2023, Cursor (designed by the Anysphere research lab) raised $8M from OpenAI and $11M in total funding as they delivered the message:
In the next few years, we’d like to build a code editor that is more helpful, delightful, and fun than the world has ever seen.
In 2024, many developers began testing or fully transitioning to using Cursor as their primary IDE of choice.
The purpose of this article is to give you a first-person perspective on my experience using Cursor and how I compare it to VSCode. Specifically, I will be discussing how each IDE performs for Data Science when using their respective AI assistance capabilities.