When I type a prompt into the chat pane in Cursor, it is indistinguishable from programming to me. The part where I tap tap tap on the keyboard and code comes on the screen isn’t programming, that’s typing. The part where I use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the IDE isn’t programming either. Both of those parts (the typing and navigating) is being done by a robot when I prompt Cursor, but the programming is still done by me.

When I look at a ticket in JIRA that says, for example, “add a way to archive a contact” in my React/Node/MySql application, when I estimate, I think

1. Add an archived field to the contact entity, default to false, set as non-nullable
2. Generate a migration and run it on my local database
3. Add DB service functions to archive and unarchive contacts
4. Write unit tests for those DB service functions
5. Add GQL mutation functions to archive and unarchive a contact
6. Add archived to client GQL queries
7. Add archived to the client-side contact model by running the GQL code generator
8. Make sure to set up the model’s archived field from the GQL query in Redux
9. Add a Redux reducer to set the archived field
10. Add Client-side functions to optimistically update the redux and call the GQL mutation (undoing on error)
11. Add an “archive”/“unarchive” button on edit on the contact edit dialog (show the one that applies to the contact)
12. Look at lists that show contacts and decide if they need a way to filter archived contacts out or not

I can tell you from experience, that I can do steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 with a prompt that has basically what that says and at-mentioning the files that will be updated and that serve as a model (I probably have another entity with an archived field). Step 2 is a yarn script for me that compares the schema in my code to the one in my DB. Steps 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 would be another prompt, and finally I will do 12 & 13 manually or with completions because I might want to adjust the UI.

Before Cursor, I still wrote out that list because I like to Build a Progress Bar for My Work that helps me make an estimate, keep on track, and know if I am not going to make it. When I work with Junior devs, I often develop this list with them to communicate what I want done with more details.

Is this programming? I think so. Instead of TypeScript, I am “programming” in a loosely specified, natural language inspired, custom DSL. I run scripts to generate my migration code from schemas and my client side models from GQL queries, and to me, prompting Cursor is basically the same thing.