I was asked on Twitter to compare the hot new Cursor AI Editor with PhpStorm for Laravel developers. Here are my quick thoughts!

I'm currently using both Cursor and PhpStorm with Copilot. The AI features are worlds better in Cursor than Copilot anywhere. The AI has no problem understanding Laravel, Cursor actually understands it way more thanks to it's better context features.

However, core IDE support like intellisense and having the IDE understand the code for refactoring and navigation is just not there in Cursor at the same level as PhpStorm, even with extensions. If you don't need refactoring, do definitely try Cursor out!

Or do like me, have both editors open, use Cursor when working within a few single files, for example when adding new or editing existing features. And use PhpStorm when you want to clean up the code, and do project-wide refactors. Both are great editors for different things!

I expect both editors to converge with each other. In order to stay competitive, PhpStorm needs to add features like autocomplete in the middle of lines, and the future action predictions. And Cursor can only get better at understanding the code, especially when the official Laravel VS Code extension comes out!

For now though? I'll keep using both of these amazing editors!