There's ANOTHER new AI fork of VS Code??!

While, while, what do we have here? There’s a new AI code editor in town called Windsurf, brought to you by a company called Codeium. To be honest, I’ve been using Codeium AI as a VS Code extension, and with their stunning website, I was hopping off my chair and installed Windsurf the moment I learned about this new code editor on my machine.

But why do we need a new editor? Oh wait, it’s because Cursor already has 40,000 developers using their product, and that’s exactly why we need more competition, right?

So what are you waiting for? Go install it, and I’ll tell you everything about this editor. Because, for the sake of science and development, I’ve tried it, and I’m here to share everything with you all!

Before we dive deep into this new editor, let’s split this review into two parts:

1. The Good
2. The Bad

And believe me, the bad parts are way more fun, so let’s get started!

The Good

Let’s kick things off with the good stuff and the features this AI code editor promises. According to the website, this editor aims to work alongside developers, creating a seamless flow between AI and human inputs. They call this collaboration Flows. I’m not making this up—that’s the wording straight from their site, which you can check out by clicking here.

They claim that the editor will index your codebase, and in the Composer, you simply enter the task. The AI then goes through the codebase and makes changes step by step. Pretty cool, right?

Another key feature is called Cascade. This one provides full context awareness, suggesting and running commands for developers. It also includes a “pick up where you left off” capability and handles multiple files seamlessly.

In other words, it’s like a smart text box that manages multiple files and performs operations across them. Sounds impressive!

The Bad

Now, these features are cool and all, but here’s where things get a bit messy…

For this review, I cloned my Astro project from GitHub to see how it works in this new AI code editor. I opened the codebase in Windsurf and decided to test out the Cascade feature by asking it to guide me on how to run the project. You can check out the video below to see how it all played out:

In the above video, you can see me prompting Cascade to tell me how to run the project. It started off by suggesting npm. Now here’s the thing: I use nvm (Node Version Manager) for my Node setup, which is a shell-based install, not a system-wide one. On the other hand, Bun is installed system-wide.

The AI first tried to use the system’s Node.js, and unsurprisingly, it failed. There were a ton of warnings, and in the end, it just didn’t work. Next, it attempted to use Bun. It did work, but here’s the problem: it was so slow. It took more than 10 minutes to get this going.

And this is where I see a big issue. The AI can do some cool stuff, but it relies heavily on having the right environment set up on your system. Plus, the speed is a major letdown. Please, Codeium, I love your products—can you make it faster? Please!

When I tried running this project using bun run dev, it didn’t work. So, I had to reinstall all the dependencies with bun install. That part went fine, but it was a bit of a hassle.

Final Thoughts

Look, I’m really trying hard to like this product, but I’ve got to be honest: the promises are great, but they’re just not fully delivered yet.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I came across Theo’s video on the same tool, and his experience wasn’t great either. He did even more testing than I did, and let’s just say he wasn’t impressed.

Now, there’s one thing I do like: the workflow. The concept is solid. The idea of a natural flow, making things smoother, and having a unified experience is fantastic. But it needs a lot of work.

As for me, I’ve installed this editor on my machine, and whether I use it or not will depend on my mood and the task at hand.

Because it took so long to get things working, I couldn’t complete other tests in time, like adding new features. But check out Theo’s video for a deeper dive—he’s done way more testing and gives a true experience of using this tool.

If things improve, I’ll write another blog post and update this review accordingly.

Until then, peace out, nerds. 👓