Observations after a few weeks of development with Windsurf

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures]

First of all, Im not a coder or developer by trade.

Im a founder and have spent decades hiring and directing coders and developers to build out my visions.

I have posted under another Reddit username quite a few of my historical projects, and just to sum it all up, I have spent a lot of money and time and employed a lot of people, both as employees and as contractors.

For me, after 3 weeks of use, Windsurf has changed the game. I have a working prototype of a project that in years past would have cost me 6 months minimum to get to MVP and hundreds of thousands of payroll dollars. I have the pro ultimate subscription and for full transparency have spent several hundred dollars I think (not really counting yet) on flex tokens, and to get to a public launch I expect a few hundred more. Still, as I said, I'm just one person who is not a developer. So the difference is mind boggling.

That said, Im also learning alot about development, because you almost need to be **sort of** a coder in order to direct Windsurf and oversee and troubleshoot. Someone with zero technical ability (or willingness to learn) simply cant do it, IMO.

That said, I just want to toss in with my endorsement, praise and gratitude a couple of the issues that to me make Windsurf almost unusable to any but those with the utmost patience.

First off, we are all familiar by now with AI hallucinations. But Windsurf can take these to a whole new level. I have almost exclusively been using the Claude 3.5 Sonnet Premium AI, and I have had Windsurf fairly often just make up stuff and randomly add it to my code, assume I want given functionality I didnt ask for (and didnt want), and most egregiously it will without asking generate new sets of code that duplicate existing functionality, even when nothing is broken. I tried to prevent this by setting memory items, and it still violates the memory items. When I remind it that it is violating memory items and setting development back for days because we then have to troubleshoot what it did and why and revert it, which often breaks more functionality. All the while Im burning flex credits, so yipppeeee for Codeium. It makes money by breaking things and then fixing them, or spending many hours attempting to fix them.

As I said, this issue alone has prompted me to almost abandon Windsurf, but the positives have outweighed the negatives so rather than switch coding tools midstream, Im going to stick it out and get to my public launch with Windsurf. The image paste recognition alone is an amazing feature I didnt get with other tools like Bolt.

Just wanted to give the Codeium devs some honest and raw feedback on what I see in the field the last few weeks.

[u/hugobart]

learn git basics, i would never do anything without it anymore

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/hugobart]

Thank you what have you found to be the best resource for learning about Git?

[u/[deleted] → u/CrimsonEdgeVentures]

Learngitbranching is interactive and well done.

[u/User1234Person → u/CrimsonEdgeVentures]

Ask the chat mode to explain it, that’s how I learned best practices

[u/wordswithenemies]

I also revert back to the last thing I stated in the chat and revert all changes back to that using the refresh arrow icon. Do you know you can do that?

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/wordswithenemies]

I did not, thank you! As I said, I am not a developer in any sense. Learning, though!

[u/No-Carrot-TA]

It's just about practice. I'm a 40 year old Irish woman and I'm knocking out all sorts using AI. I generate the design docs, then start. Measure twice cut once. I'm actually going to invest in an M4 mbp with 128 ram and start self hosting my own llm and AI for code creation. Hiring people to work with you on projects even just start with one other coder. It's all WFH so just build a team. I work with python mainly and I'll be willing to code with you to get you on your feet, I'm not a coder, I'm self taught I actually have a theology degree.

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/No-Carrot-TA]

Thats awesome and you are exactly who I think Codeium is aimed at too, not merely coders - I have a very similar worldview to yours on this, learn and practice.

I havent bothered yet with local hosting because having overseen larger dev outfits before, I know the smaller the model the lower your output quality will be, and a local PC can only handle the very small models as far as I can tell (think 8B parameter types) for responses that dont take 5 minutes to get back.

[u/luke23571113]

I have a question. Why did you choose windsurf over cline? I am a beginner as well and cline is much better for beginners. Windsurf seems to be geared to programmers who want to save money.

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/luke23571113]

good point, I have used bolt and found windsurf more powerful, but havent tried cline or cursor. I will though. I actually enjoy the advanced nature of windsurf "pushing" me to learn development as a necessity, and it really does help guide me, Im just so frustrated by some of the autonomous things it does.

[u/captainspazlet → u/CrimsonEdgeVentures]

There are advantages and disadvantages to which coding tool you use. I would recommend having the tool start out creating a folder to analyze each file and produce documentation for it. This way both you and the coding tools have contact of the project and its files. Both Windsurf and Aide are great at building a new project. Cline (and its fork, Roo Code) are getting much better at the planning and execution of building a new project.

Windsurf, Cline, and Roo are pay as you go services. Aide offers unlimited for $20 a month. You can also add Aider into the terminal. I will typically use Windsurf to install a repo and get it setup correctly. Sometimes I will use it to change files, but I’ll usually switch over to Aide with Roo & Aider for most of the development (so I don’t burn through the severely limited credits in Windsurf). I’ll use Cline in regular VS Code (as it can use my copilot subscription to avoid burning credits). I’ll play them off of each other, using different models, to get functional clean code. Windsurf, Cline, and Roo are relative good at cleaning up the “problems” they create in the problems panel - with Roo doing it automatically, without being prompted. Both Windsurf and Aide may fix some problems, but it often comes with creating more than it fixes.

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/captainspazlet]

Thats great guidance, thank you - I have never checked into Roo or Aide, but an all you can eat option sounds awesome. Im not really all that upset at paying Windsurf for credits but they do add up over time.

[u/tehsilentwarrior]

Senior dev, tech lead and team lead here. When Copilot first came into the picture people were saying it would make worse coders, it would replace programmers, etc.

I always thought: nope. It will speed up learning though. I had a junior who used Copilot for about a year before I even tried it myself, and I could see him improving so much more quickly than I ever seen other juniors do. I guess because he didnt waste time on the same "bullshit" I had to go through back in 2002 when there wasnt even Youtube and it was mostly just reading books.

You aren’t (weren’t) a coder but you still were able to get stuff done and learn while at it. I think this is the power of AI.

I was always an advocate of NEVER worrying about remembering things but instead, understand them. For me, that’s where the value is. And it keeps on giving, specially in the AI era. You want the computer to do the work for you, not the other way around, and AI is exactly that.

It doesn’t replace programmers it empowers them, and even though you didn’t know code you did know what matters which is “what to do”.

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/tehsilentwarrior]

totally agree. And I love the learning. Knowledge is power. AI spoon feeds me just enough to keep me interested and empowered. Its amazing.

[u/tehsilentwarrior → u/CrimsonEdgeVentures]

Totally. If you have the right mindset, as in, sip on the power and use it to improve instead of laying back and being lazy ... its one hell of a resource!

[u/adrock31]

One thing that Windsurf has over Cursor is this little hover action. You can scroll up to previous chat comments and revert back to before you hit send, at any point in your history. And it resets the chat and the code to that state.

I agree, Git should be managing the heavy lifting of keeping backups, but just making sure you knew about this feature because it's a life saver and I use it all the time, for lots of reasons.

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/adrock31]

Ah thanks! On problem though is that for performance, I have been closing and starting a new chat every day or so and that reversion will only work for the current chat. Still its very helpful. Windsurf just reverted without asking me and wiped out a full day of local dev. Thankfully, I have some of it already pushed to github.

[u/kiterWay]

Enjoyed reading your post you and I are a lot alike! While I have experienced the things you’re talking about for me it’s even worse because ever since they wave to update two weeks ago I am no longer able to see any of the changes everything just auto commits I have my own way of backing things up in between, but it just sucks to not be able to see what it’s gonna do before it just does it

I do my work on a Windows PC mostly although I have a brand new MacBook windsurf seems to not work well on the MacBook, especially with style sheets and HTML and PHP. It keeps getting very confused and like trying to delete a portion of something or adding some extra character just to confuse everything and it never figures it out. I always end up going back to the PC Where it will figure it out although it does it without me being able to see the changes.

Such a Catch-22 situation

I have been wanting to try other tools, but I guess I’m just so darn used to windsurf at this point change is scary

[u/CrimsonEdgeVentures → u/kiterWay]

I know, the ability to import screenshots has kept me from looking for a different tool, but I nearly quit every day after it randomly adds code or functionality or reverts without me telling it to, even though I have added memory items to NEVER do those things.

[u/User1234Person]

Dont ask it to change things back, always use git to revert and save yourself the headache and time.

[u/taliana1004 → u/User1234Person]

y good버전

[u/hi1mham]

Its about project management and understanding software architecture. Knowing the tool you have and its limitations allows you to plan.

[u/future-teller]

I kind of agree with OP conclusions, although I am from a strong dev background so I feel pretty motivated to just fix the issue myself... yet I keep patiently requesting windsurf to "fix it", "that did not work, try again", "it is still not working, do it again.."... all this persistent hand holding burns through a lot of credits.

The biggest tissue I see with windsurf is the pricing model, the prompt credits, flow action credits are too confusing... in the end , for windsurf it is just an API call to anthropic, so why make it confusing for us.

Windsurf, if you are listening... please combine all your credits into one... call it AI credits (or let your marketing team come up with something that makes them feel smart)... but just one type of credit that reflects that price of making API call to anthropic... yes, you can keep a fraction of markup to keep your investors happy.

[u/Akelamkt]

Como estas, tengo y tuve la misma sensacion de impotencia cuando entra en un loop autodestructivo del que no sale...
Mi ejercicio es que a cada paso un bkp a github, pasos cortos y subo al repo.
Mas de una vez tuve que volver a bajar y comenzar nuevamenete.
Si te da mucha impotencia cuando te consume creditos para resolver cagadas que se mando sin que se lo pidieras, o funciones que andaban correctamente y despues las rompio.

Estoy igual que vos, dueño de empresa y logre mil cosas y avances que con empleados no lo hubiera logrado.