Cursor is now free for students!
If you're a student and haven’t tried Cursor yet, now’s the time. They just made their AI coding editor completely free for students. It’s like VS Code with an AI pair programmer built in and it actually understands your codebase (better than Copilot in my opinion!).
But here's the thing. Tools like Cursor aren't shortcuts to become a developer. They're multipliers. If you take the time to really learn how code works, tools like this make you faster and more effective. If you skip that part, you might get output, but not insight. Learn to think in code first. Then use AI to move quicker.
I use Cursor myself while building sliplane.io, my platform for hosting Docker apps. It saves time, but only because I know what I want it to do. The real leverage comes from combining good tools with solid understanding.
Cheers,
Jonas Co-Founder sliplane.io
Top comments (42)
Genius plan.
That’s a real nice plan
😂
That's a great point!
🤣🤣🤣
Not only that, in the future...
no one will be able to code...
🤑
I don't think students should use Cursor. Cursor will make them think, work and eventually learn less then if they would use conventional editor. It is made more for already experienced devs, because it makes a lot of stupid things that later need to be fixed manually... A couple of weeks a go it by its own totally destroyed my project. After that, I don't use it anymore.
Yeah, we all had that thought and that's probably their ultimate goal. Students are now passengers rather than drivers.
Cursor is a tool. Blaming the tool for destroying your project? I recommend learning to take personal responsibility.
If a tool doesn't do what it says, that is the tool's fault (or the person who made the tool), not yours.
For example, let's say you bought some laundry detergent that claims to make your clothes super clean. You tried it, and it made them super clean but also stripped all the color out of them. You would say that the laundry detergent ruined your clothes.
I get your analogy with the detergent, and you're right that if a product fails to meet its claims, the maker bears some responsibility. But in the software world—especially in dev tools like Cursor—the line is blurrier. Tools like this are powerful but still evolving, and they often expect a certain level of experience and caution from the user.
If you give a chainsaw to someone who’s never used one, and they cut through the wrong thing, is the chainsaw to blame? Maybe partially, if it had a defect. But there's also an expectation that the user knows what they’re doing, tests things, uses version control, and doesn’t blindly trust automation.
Tools can fail, sure. But protecting your project, testing changes, and maintaining backups are basic dev practices. Without those, blaming the tool alone feels like shifting responsibility.
The answer here is no, not “maybe partially”. In this case, the person misused the tool. It doesn't matter if the tool had a defect if the person misused the tool without influence from the defect.
@deividas_strole said:
That is the tool's fault. You say that “protecting your project, testing changes, and maintaining backups are basic dev practices.” Are you trying to imply that Deividas didn't do these things? Plus, Cursor is marketed to non-developers who don't know about these best practices. All Deividas said was that Cursor destroyed his project. He didn't say “I forgot version control, so now I can't recover it”. He is perfectly justified and correct in blaming Cursor for destroying his project because it did.
This is such a shockingly bad argument.
If you let cursor destroy your project that at minimum means you didn't use version control. If you're not using version control in this day and age your project was never going to be a success anyway. What do you think was going to happen when the only hard drive you likely had your code on died? You're not doing version control in 2025 why would you be doing regular backups.
That's all secondary to even not reviewing the code that cursor spits out (which is in their documentation) or not having even the most basic levels of tests.
If nothing else hopefully cursor taught you new level 101 lessons that will make you a better programmer.
With that said I do agree students shouldn't be using ai. Atleast not early on.
We must have two different definitions of destroying a project. I think that if something completely ruins your project and you have to revert all the changes in version control, it destroyed your project. I'm not saying that destroying a project means you can't recover it or that you don't have version control.
To me, the fact that the OP says his project was 'destroyed' and then swore off Cursor suggests something deeper. If he had version control or backups, he could’ve reverted the changes and moved on. That kind of incident usually becomes an annoyance - not a full abandonment of the tool.
So either version control wasn’t in place, or changes were applied without review or testing - both of which fall under user responsibility. Cursor tends to show a diff before applying changes, which is great - but no AI tool should be treated as infallible. It’s still up to developers to review what’s happening and control when and how it gets applied.
It’s totally fair to criticize the tool’s behavior, especially if it made destructive changes despite a clear prompt. But blaming it entirely without reflecting on workflow hygiene misses a huge learning opportunity.
Really, none of us should be making this many assumptions. None of us know if @deividas_strole had version control and was just disappointed with Cursor's performance and quit using it, or if he forgot version control and Cursor destroyed his project.
It's not fair to tell him “take personal responsibility” or to defend him without knowing about the situation. So I'm not going to comment about this more unless he were to provide additional details (which is up to him).
i agree, why is everyone being so defensive about cursor or about the guy using it? he was just sharing his experience. move on
Nobody’s defending the tool. Pointing out the importance of good development hygiene - version control, backups, and reviewing changes - isn’t brand loyalty, it’s just basic experience. If a dev learns that lesson the hard way, that’s unfortunate, but let’s not pretend it’s only the tool’s fault. Tools don’t wreck projects on their own - blind trust and lack of safeguards usually play a role.
So it destroyed your project, you quickly realized that, and reverted back to the last version before cursor destroyed your project? Losing a small amount of time one time?
If that's the case I don't really understand why this is an example of the tool being so bad you'd never use it again. You don't have to use the tool. But this is expected that it can happen. Which is why you should target small changes and limit the scope. I'd be shocked if that's not part of their documentation.
Has cursor every saved you a ton of time? It has for me. Doing simple things like migrations, schemas, documentation, and even small helper functions has been an awesome experience in cursor. Well worth the $20 and the understanding that I might need to revert a change it makes sometimes.
Are you talking to me? I never said Cursor destroyed my project. (I mostly use Zed and VS Code anyway).
Yeah dumb them down even further.
Fun fact: got a job proposal that was asking to be an expert in ... Cursor 🤣
thats hilarious, but I get it! I wouldnt hire someone who doesnt use any LLMs for coding lol
Good thing I'm not trying to get into your company then 😅 Any dev should be able to work 100% without LLM. They're an optional tool to help. The best part of that offer was asking to be an expert on a tool released... 2 years ago.
Of course, if you cant work without LLM support I wouldnt even consider you a dev. But if you completely ignore LLMs (not for learning purposes, but actually writing code daily), you're probably just being ignorant. As always, exceptions apply.
Ignorant? That's a fun one. They help, but generally speaking a good dev will writer better code faster than AI will, especially if you consider the time it takes to correct all the issues the LLMs still make when producing code. Though I agree they can help write test code faster, but even then, if you have a good code base, reusing other tests will be more productive and likely deliver better results. Generally speaking, the senior devs I know and exchange with use it as an advanced auto completion tool, to get a couple of lines auto written, but that's about it. So it helps, better than the old auto completion we used to have, but isn't fundamentally required at all. And that's not even mentioning all the edge cases where they're either useless or impossible to use.
Would you not call someone ignorant who doesnt use auto complete even though it improves productivity?
I prrsonally stand with Jonas's point here. I personally know how to write the code, how to optimize it for production. But instead of writing all that code myself, i just have to prompt and review while eating my bowl of cereal. If I didnt know what the code does actually, that'd be a bad thing.
In my country, a boy ,around 12 year old already awarded by making Ai for elderly people, how it could be worth .?academy already a rat race where student must be competitive to get a certificate for applying a job. This competition will impact to student using AI increasing day by day .
Certificate, already a common thing needed for mid paid job on market nowaday, some country, especially India and Asia the acceptant rate for people who have certificates for a job can up to 100%. In my country it already 90% .
Well if the certificate still grow up ,and more and more standardized test come up . well there is no option for student if they want to become middle class .
I think Cusor make a great movement in competitive world .
Perfect, feels good to see student stuff getting boosted for once - you think tools like this actually help folks stick around coding longer, or just make stuff easier for a bit then drop off?
I need cursor ai to study please can get it
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Agreed
Cursors made functions faster than I did, but were sometimes harder to understand and more complex. I often thought, "I'll fix it later," which often meant never. The code base became unwieldy. After reading "Clean Code," I don't think students should use them.
How to access this free version
But Not For Pakistani Students....
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