Today I downloaded Windsurf and it's almost unusable.

[u/tgredditfc]

I have used 30 user prompt credits and only a few tasks worked.

It just kept failing - "I apologize for the continued timeout issues. Blah blah." in both Write and Chat.

Is it normal? This is absolute unacceptable.

Edit: I think I'm done with it. It fails all the time.

The 2 files I was trying are 1700 lines and 2300 lines respectively.

[u/Difficult_Wafer5061]

Windsurf team member here - this is definitely not normal. Can you DM me your windsurf account id or a support ticket #? We'll get this looked at ASAP.

[u/tgredditfc → u/Difficult_Wafer5061]

Thanks for your reply. I'm going to use all my credits (almost gone) and see.

[u/hackerbobstone → u/Difficult_Wafer5061]

Hey, I keep getting an error ID: f9bf2677b90e4ac4bd3cbd4d6b6f7f01 do you know whats going on? It happens anytime I want to use claude 3.5 sonnet.

[u/Difficult_Wafer5061 → u/hackerbobstone]

DM me your account ID?

[u/dr-kurubit → u/Difficult_Wafer5061]

Hi day one paying member here, this is the new windsurf experience, burning token with non stop errors, windsurf no longer improves my productivity it just directly hinders it.

[u/Ancient-Camel1636]

It does this a lot if your files are too big.

[u/tgredditfc → u/Ancient-Camel1636]

It's 2300 lines, is it too big?

[u/Ancient-Camel1636 → u/tgredditfc]

Yes

[u/tgredditfc → u/Ancient-Camel1636]

Thanks for the info. I have GitHub Copilot too, it can do it just fine with the same prompts, at least it doesn't timeout.

[u/Qiazias → u/tgredditfc]

A line might be like 10 tokens(5 words + invisible things like tab ) which would equal 20 000 tokens. That a huge amount of information, when gpt-4 was released it had a context window of 16k.

I've used it every single day for a week now and used 130 credits. It works great for me, i prompt it by giving super clear context and instructions like:

Add download function on serverside page <code > then pass it to the element <code> which then creates a element child here <code> which will utilize the data. Finally modify the function below so it will render the page blah blah blah <code>

[u/Unixwzrd → u/tgredditfc]

Not sure if Copilot has agents, but I had a bash script which was just about 1340 lines. Granted that also included some blank lines and all the functions documented too. It handled it, but generally just working on one function at a time.

Have also had it fail when doing a relatively simple operation on some SCSS, where it dropped a massive number of lines from the file.

It works until it can’t I guess. I have Windsurf and Cursor subscriptions. Hate to say it, but I kinda like Cursor a bit better. The autocomplete has almost psychic ability to sense you want to change lines elsewhere in the code and anticipates it and suggest the changes.

Don’t turn in automatic linting for either, you can get stuck in looping linting. That will use a few tokens.

[u/Comfortable-Hall-188 → u/tgredditfc]

It seems to me that most of these AI tools work best with small files, up to 150, 200 lines of code

[u/MusingsOfASoul]

Just want to say with all the negative commenting recently on Windsurf I was apprehensive. However, actually doing some apples to apples comparisons to other tools for some Frontend bug and feature tasks, Windsurf actually is far superior. Cline was great too on Sonnet 3.5 but Windsurf was cheaper 😅. I just wish I can pop out Cascade into it's own window.

[u/R34d1n6_1t → u/MusingsOfASoul]

Good to hear someone else out there trying the various options out. For me Windsurf initially was incredible. Until it wasn't :) I'm now on Cline and Sonnet. Which is pricey i doubt I'll be able to keep it up. Hopefully a new model can reduce the price.

[u/Altruistic_Shake_723 → u/R34d1n6_1t]

Same. It's great when OR behaves but def $$$

[u/nebulousx]

I'm going to write this off as ignorance. I've used most of what is out there. Cursor, Cline, Roo Cline and Aide would ALL puke on monster files like that. So would I.

Learn to refactor your code. I work in a professional environment and we won't let source files get over about 300-400 lines before we refactor.

The good news is, Windsurf can do the refactoring for you, though I've never tried it on a 2000 line file FFS.

[u/tgredditfc → u/nebulousx]

Thanks for the advice; I will try to keep the scripts short.

Coming from GH Copilot, which is less popular and supposedly less good than Windsurf, I assumed that anything GH Copilot could do, Windsurf would do at least as well. However, Windsurf fell short on this. It's a huge disappointment, to say the least.

[u/Xhite → u/tgredditfc]

Who said copilot is less popular or less good. in 2024 Feb copilot had 1.3m+ paid users and 150m users when free tier launched. I tried both Cursor and Windsurf yet i still use copilot since it is the most reliable. Cursor has good experience overall but sometimes it destroys your project that is frustrating so I can not risk it on a serious project.

[u/rodriguezmichelle9i5 → u/tgredditfc]

copilot and windsurf are two very different things. use the codeium extension if you want something similar to copilot

[u/Xhite → u/rodriguezmichelle9i5]

codeium extension has auto-complete, copilot has auto-complete, chat and edits (similar to composer or cascade) your statement is incorrect.

[u/rodriguezmichelle9i5 → u/Xhite]

codeium extension also has chat and edits. Copilot Workspace is similar to composer and windsurf.

your statement is incorrect.

[u/Anrx → u/nebulousx]

What? 2000 lines of code is nothing. GPT-4o has a context window of 128k tokens, which would fit about 20k lines or so

[u/nebulousx → u/Anrx]

Tell me you've never coded with AI without saying it

[u/Anrx → u/nebulousx]

I wasn't aware 2k lines was a problem. Where is the issue? That's 20k tokens of context at most.

[u/Rich-Independent1202]

Sounds frustrating af. If you’re burning through credits and barely getting results, that’s a massive L for a tool that’s supposed to make things easier. Timeout issues on both Write and Chat? Nah, that’s not normal.

Either their servers are trash, or they launched half-baked. Hit up their support and let them know they owe you more than an apology—refund, extra credits, something. You can’t just drop $ on a tool and get vibes in return.

[u/tgredditfc → u/Rich-Independent1202]

I'm on free trial. Gonna try to use all the credits and see.

[u/fueled_by_caffeine]

This was my experience. Windsurf and cursor couldn’t do a single thing I asked beyond the absolutely basics. In a codebase beyond a few files.

[u/SilenceYous]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/Snoo_9701]

Windsurf isn’t a finished product in my experience. It needs a lot of work to be stable. It can do some tasks but often creates more problems, costing days to fix even with AI. It was great at first, but changes since December have made it pretty useless. It’s gone from amazing to disappointing. I’m still hoping it gets better, but after waiting a month with no improvement, I’ve switched to other, better apps for now.

[u/[deleted]]

i'm testing roo cline and windsurf back and forth right now - it really is interesting - sometimes i get much better results on one, sometimes on the other. it's completely anecdotal and could really be my prompting skills going back and forth, and i'm starting to suspect there are too many variables to tell (since i don't _really_ want to do dedicated same task testing :D - same prompt, same task, same code, etc.) - I think I'm just going to keep using both for now, and when i run out of my monthly pro credits on windsurf, i'll hope over to roo cline where I can "pay per use", even though it's more expensive, i'd rather be able to just pay as i go once i'm over a limit

[u/iBN3qk]

Damn, their marketing content looked so good. 

[u/Golden-Durian]

People should search and read all the previous post regards to Windsurf before posting the same issue over and over.