How I Cut My AI Dev Time in Half (and Actually Started Enjoying It Again)

Let’s be honest, working in AI can feel like you're constantly juggling flaming swords. Between writing code, debugging, preprocessing, training, and tuning… it’s chaos.

And if you’re still doing it all the old-fashioned way, there’s a good chance you're losing hours each week to things that could (and should) be automated.

I know I was until I found two tools that genuinely transformed how I work: Cursor and Windsurf.

Here's how they changed everything for me.

Cursor: The Code Editor That Doesn’t Make Me Think

Imagine VS Code, but with a brain and the patience of a senior engineer who actually likes helping you.

Cursor isn’t just an editor. It understands your intent, your codebase, and your pain points.

One day, I typed: "Write a PyTorch function to clean missing values and normalize features." Cursor responded with clean, working code in under ten seconds.

That’s when it clicked: this wasn’t just a time-saver, it was a mindset shift. No more tab-switching. No more syntax fumbling. No more copy-pasting from last year's notebook.

It’s not perfect, but it gets so much right. Especially when you're neck-deep in applied AI work, jumping between models, datasets, and logic layers.

Windsurf: The Flow Machine I Didn’t Know I Needed

If Cursor is the brain, Windsurf is the engine.

It’s not your average IDE, it’s designed for people building real AI systems. And the best part? It actually keeps you in flow.

The built-in agent, Cascade, acts like a project-aware teammate. It knows what you’re working on, gives you useful nudges without being annoying, and lets you ask for things like:

“Create a prototype of a Sales Dashboard with dummy data”

…and it just does it.

Setup, training, refactoring, it’s all integrated. No bash gymnastics. No endless tabs. It’s one clean, focused space built for deep work.

The Game-Changer: Using Them Together

This is where the magic happens.

Cursor helps you think faster. Windsurf helps you stay focused. Together, they give you something rare in AI dev: momentum.

Since using both, I’ve halved my prototyping time, cut down debugging by more than 70%, and collaborated more smoothly across teams.

But more than that, I started enjoying the process again. Coding stopped feeling like a grind. It became creative again.

Curious?

If you’re working in AI, building anything even slightly complex, give these tools a try. I’d bet by lunchtime, you’ll feel the difference.

And if you’ve got tools that keep you in the zone, drop them below. I’m always looking to level up the stack.

P.S. Know someone stuck in the notebook-copy-paste loop? Do them a favour and share this. They’ll thank you.