Why hackers moved from IntelliJ IDEA to Cursor
1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“Switched from Intellij (various) to Cursor because of AI integration”KingOfCoders, 2026-02-13original comment ↗
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IntelliJ IDEA vs Cursor
| IntelliJ IDEA | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 0 | 6 |
| Hackers who criticize | 2 | 12 |
| Moved away from it | 2 | 6 |
| Moved to it | 0 | 3 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of IntelliJ IDEA
“I switched from IntelliJ to emacs for this reason and it’s been great”ATMLOTTOBEER, 2026-03-26original comment ↗
“except for IntelliJ, which seems lost”vladvasiliu, 2025-12-25original comment ↗
Praise for Cursor
“now I’m finding Cursor is even better for my coding stuff.”andsoitis, 2026-09-20original comment ↗
“In 2023 I moved from VS Code to Cursor.”murlax, 2026-08-01original comment ↗
“they care a lot about developer experience.”xiphias2, 2026-02-02original comment ↗
“I'm a non-technical founder who built an entire SaaS frontend using v0 and Cursor over the past year.”Soerensen, 2026-02-02original comment ↗
“I switched from Copilot to Cursor at the end of 2025, and it was absolute night and day in terms of how the agents behaved.”deanc, 2026-01-07original comment ↗