I'm not sure that Andrej envisioned this when he tweeted out his Vibe Coding take what seems like forever ago now.
I applaud anybody who jumps into Cursor (or other AI Assisted Coding Tools) to build a new product. I think that a way to express ideas is awesome, and allowing for these ideas to materialize is valuable for society and users will determine what is valuable/usable.
However, it's well documented that the expression of these tools is limited. I think that the bet here is that LLMs will continue to get better and better, paving the way for these tools to become more valuable: which I haven't been convinced with yet.
At it's core you can list out the primary functionality of an AI Assisted Coding platform and how these components interact. Their prompts have been dumped, and the tools have been replicated, plus the big LLM providers are in this space as well and understand more nuances around the models and how they interact with the different components.
$9B seems bonkers, but time will tell. There are a few outcomes here: pop, life changes incredibly, or this is the stagnation period that seems to happen with AI/ML. LLMs have changed the way I work already, the question is "what is next". I am hoping that I am ahead of others on the Hype cycle, but only time will tell (from heavy use of AI tools).
> I think that the bet here is that LLMs will continue to get better and better
I don't think so. I think the way we use the same LLMs will continue to get better. Cursor is built on essentially the exact same LLM models as VSCode/Github Copilot, yet Cursor managed to wring a lot more usefulness out of them.
I think it's still early days in understanding how to use LLMs as a foundational technology to build out other products, and improving the models isn't all that necessary. In my view.
I think it's a combination of both, the LLM's today for coding are just average containing a lot of pre-2024 knowledge. The vibe tools are getting around some of the shortcomings and increased token limits which is great, but up to date current knowledge can't rely on llm.txt doc updates as context and expect reasonable code generation. Give me some monthly updated topic related LLM's to use (coding, content writing, history), I don't need the entire world all the time.
I applaud anybody who jumps into Cursor (or other AI Assisted Coding Tools) to build a new product. I think that a way to express ideas is awesome, and allowing for these ideas to materialize is valuable for society and users will determine what is valuable/usable.
However, it's well documented that the expression of these tools is limited. I think that the bet here is that LLMs will continue to get better and better, paving the way for these tools to become more valuable: which I haven't been convinced with yet.
At it's core you can list out the primary functionality of an AI Assisted Coding platform and how these components interact. Their prompts have been dumped, and the tools have been replicated, plus the big LLM providers are in this space as well and understand more nuances around the models and how they interact with the different components.
$9B seems bonkers, but time will tell. There are a few outcomes here: pop, life changes incredibly, or this is the stagnation period that seems to happen with AI/ML. LLMs have changed the way I work already, the question is "what is next". I am hoping that I am ahead of others on the Hype cycle, but only time will tell (from heavy use of AI tools).