Cursor AI can make you dumb · AI Developer Accelerator

Cursor AI can make you dumb

I have been working on a new application, a demo for someone else to show some stuff. I was using Cursor as my IDE, and a a nextjs environment with react components, shadcn and clerk.

I started out just prompting the IDE to create 'stuff' for me and this got me a long way, but then I reached a stage where i saw the same errors coming up again and again. I didn't know why they were occurring, or where they were coming from.

I was getting red squiggles under some of my imports. Some places needed 'use client' and others didn't.

After about my 3rd or 4th 'git fetch origin && git reset --hard origin/main', I decided it was time to go back to basics and LEARN what was happening. I jumped over to nextjs.org and read their React Foundations course, which had 11 chapters and took about an hour. I am a bit more informed now about components, props and states. Overall, it was time well spent. I think I need to go find a similar typescript one. I'm not looking for a coding course. I'm looking for a Typescript fundamentals,

My two major takeaways from this whole thing are;

After you get your codebase to a known good working state, get it in Github. Then iterate feature by feature. When the feature is working as expected, Get it in Git Hub!!
Don't be arrogant enough to think you don't need to learn something new. There is always a place for continuous development. Isn't that why we are here?

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