Code Gen
AI code generation in 2026 is good enough to change how professional developers work and not good enough to let non-developers build production software. Both of those statements are true simultaneously, and the tension between them is the entire conversation. This article is the honest inventory — what AI code generation
Code Gen
Nobody uses just one AI coding tool. The developers who get the most out of AI code generation are running two or three tools that cover different parts of the workflow -- autocomplete for the typing, an agent for the big changes, maybe a UI generator for frontend work. The
Code Gen
AI code generation makes you faster at some things and slower at others, and almost nobody tracks which is which. The productivity claims range from "10x developer" to "net negative after debugging," and both are true -- for different tasks, different skill levels, and different project
Code Gen
Vibe coding — the workflow where you describe what you want and let AI write the code — has a marketing problem. The marketing is done by people posting "I built a SaaS in 20 minutes" on Twitter with a screen recording that ends before the first bug report. The
Code Gen
This is the comparison that actually matters for professional developers in 2026. Not "which AI tool is best" in the abstract — that question is unanswerable — but which of the three dominant coding tools wins at the specific tasks you do every day. I ran all three across identical
Code Gen
Cursor is a VS Code fork rebuilt around AI code generation. It replaced VS Code for a meaningful chunk of professional developers sometime in 2024 and has held that ground since. The honest verdict: it's the best single tool for developers who want AI integrated into their editing