Ask HN: Are you still using AI code autocomplete?

With all the recent progress in coding assistants, I've been wondering whether AI-powered autocomplete is still an important part of developers' workflows.

I personally never got into the habit of using it very heavily. By the time I started having access to decent AI autocomplete tools, things like Cline and Augment were already around, so I ended up relying more on assistants instead.

That made me curious about how other people use it today.

Do you still use Cursor Tab, Copilot, or something similar?

If you also use coding assistants, do you find yourself using AI autocomplete less, or do the two complement each other?

5 points | by jawuilp 18 hours ago

11 comments

  • hollowturtle 13 hours ago
    I liked Cursor autocomplete a lot, it was very smart and adapted very well to your intentions, then, and they never will tell you, when they launched coding agents the autocomplete feature was somehow tuned down, not by being dumber but by being too proactive, so it resulted useless most of the time
  • al_borland 7 hours ago
    I never used it. It hijacked my tab key in VS Code and made it impossible to do anything. I’m not sure if things have changed, but at the time there was seemingly no way to change the key binding, so it had to go.
  • juntz 6 hours ago
    In this question, coding assistants is not the same as coding agnts? I used opencode or pi, no use of AI code autocomplete.
  • linesofcode 10 hours ago
    I used to use it very heavily during the original copilot days back in 2021 but it has been made totally obsolete by long running agents. Can’t say I miss it, I don’t miss anything about writing syntax.
  • xpct 17 hours ago
    I've used auto-complete back in 2022-2024 or so and really liked it. At one point, had to code offline and realized the speed up was mostly just a placebo in terms of productivity. I don't expect for auto-complete to have changed much, but since I don't delegate large tasks to agents, I've thought of trying it out again.
    [-]
    • jawuilp 15 hours ago
      I get what you mean. I don't think autocomplete has changed radically either, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

      What autocomplete/editor were you using when you felt the productivity gain was mostly a placebo? I've mostly used it in VS Code and a bit in Antigravity.

      [-]
      • xpct 14 hours ago
        I predominantly used GitHub's product (it had integrations for VS, VS code, jetbrains), and Supermaven. Later, I tried one of the earlier Cursor versions as well.
  • antoineMoPa 16 hours ago
    I don't find myself needing to open a code editor anymore. I ask agents to code and review using some custom review tooling I had agents build. I bother less and less about code details.
    [-]
    • jawuilp 15 hours ago
      Interesting, I've had almost the opposite experience. I ended up going back to a code editor because CLI agents tend to scatter my attention quite a bit, especially when working on apps with lots of different flows. I prefer a more controlled and focused environment.

      Do you also delegate small changes to agents, or do you still make those manually?

    • linesofcode 10 hours ago
      That’s the way to do it! Build tooling around your agents to streamline workflows and increase your confidence in them. The agent knows when to reach out for guidance, besides that it runs on its own.
  • jMyles 15 hours ago
    I miss autocomplete; it was really fun a couple of years ago.

    What I'd really like is an autocomplete (or pseudo code to language-of-choice) interface, with my agent continually adding the interactions to its context, so that I can chat with it about high-level project goals as the code matures.

    [-]
  • chronicler 15 hours ago
    i haven't looked at code in months
    [-]
    • hollowturtle 13 hours ago
      then tell us why you still have a job?
      [-]
      • jimmyee123 6 hours ago
        That must be entirely coded by artificial intelligence.
  • ajjobsearch 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • Alexzhenzhang 18 hours ago
    [flagged]