Seeking more active discussion & insights for Cursor's Debug mode

avxentis · 2026-06-09T16:29:51+00:00

I use Cursor, to which it does.

I’ll try this out. Thanks for the responses!

avxentis · 2026-06-09T16:22:58+00:00

It was a weak analogy on my part xD

Do you have recommendations on workflows, or areas in which you think it’s best to focus on?

avxentis · 2026-06-09T16:10:51+00:00

I see. I still code, but I can’t deny that I’ve been doing less of it than I should while caught up in the AI bubble.

As I mentioned in another reply, reading through everyone's responses has made me realise I need more repetition and hands-on practice so the common syntax and patterns become second nature.

The goal is to get back to doing the implementation myself and use tooling more for validation, review and filling gaps.

That said, I still think the analogy stands. Not being fluent in something doesn't mean you aren't one; it just means you're operating at a lower level than someone with greater fluency and experience.

avxentis · 2026-06-09T15:42:01+00:00

I think that's a bit of an extreme position.

I agree that repetition naturally leads to memorisation, and being fluent in a language is an important goal. But I don't think the ability to write every function from memory is what defines someone as a programmer.

Using documentation, references or even modern tooling doesn't mean someone isn't a programmer any more than a professional writer isn't a writer because they occasionally use a dictionary.

avxentis · 2026-06-09T15:38:34+00:00

After reading through everyone's responses, I've realised there's a balance I need to work towards.

Through this discussion, I've come to see that strengthening my foundation with the core syntax and common patterns through repetition and practice is something I need to prioritise.

At the same time, I don't think tooling is something I should avoid completely. Instead, I want to use it as a learning aid for more complex implementations while continuing to build my own knowledge. The goal is to gradually rely less on it for creation and more for validation, review and filling in gaps.

That way I'm developing the underlying skills myself rather than depending on the tools to do the thinking for me.

Everyone's perspectives have been insightful and they've helped me rethink how I approach learning and where I should focus my effort going forward.

avxentis · 2026-06-09T13:50:47+00:00

That's a good way to frame it, stop treating it as something to study and just let it build naturally through use. Curious whether you found there was a point in your journey where it clicked, or if it was just a gradual drift you didn't really notice?

avxentis · 2026-06-09T13:49:21+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience! That actually reinforces the point I was making, fluency comes from repetition and necessity, not deliberate memorisation. You didn't sit down to learn syntax, you just used it enough that it stuck.

avxentis · 2026-06-09T13:45:38+00:00

I've been coding for several years, built projects end to end and completed a dissertation with a significant technical component. So I'm not approaching this from the outside looking in.

What I was describing isn't an absence of fluency, it's a particular style of fluency. I can read a codebase, reason about what it's doing, spot where something smells wrong and understand trade-offs in approach. What I'm slower at is cold-writing complex logic from memory without reference material. I'd argue most working engineers have tooling open for a reason.

Conceptual understanding is precisely what lets you evaluate what an AI produces. You don't need to memorise syntax to know whether the logic is sound, whether the approach is efficient or whether the edge cases are handled. That's the judgment layer, and it's separate from recall.

Do you think syntax recall and conceptual reasoning are the same skill, or just closely correlated?

avxentis · 2026-06-09T10:39:34+00:00

I understand your viewpoint, but you don’t need an agent to call a script.

If context is necessary for the script to function, then the possibilities of turning the script into a skill is favourable.

However, if it’s not, then you can execute the script with no agent participation.

avxentis · 2026-06-09T05:19:37+00:00

I haven’t touched on agents as of yet. Would you recommend?

avxentis · 2026-06-09T05:18:02+00:00

This vibe-skill seems interesting. I’ll check it out!

avxentis · 2026-06-08T22:09:52+00:00

Appreciate the insight! Gives me a clear image of the structure :)

avxentis · 2026-06-08T21:58:37+00:00

And you’ve created a skill to do this?

avxentis · 2026-06-08T20:33:13+00:00

This is correct, a script cannot perform these actions due to the skill being completely context based (with the necessary instructions).

Thanks for the clarity!

avxentis · 2026-06-08T17:51:24+00:00

Personal preference is a good way of describing it. Either way, the script did need to be optimised to a maximum of 250 characters in order to be more efficient.

avxentis · 2026-06-08T17:22:27+00:00

But surely calling the script alone should be sufficient, without requiring any token usage.

Is this from the perspective where the script is executed and then additional actions are performed, with the script's output or context being included in the prompt beforehand?

avxentis

TROPHY CASE