Uninstalling Cursor After 7 Days: Is Trae Just a ‘Shell Toy’?

I did something that might be considered heretical in the tech community. I uninstalled Cursor, which I had used for three years, and switched to the domestic Trae.

The reason was simple: the free trial of Tongyi was ending, and the price of Cursor’s Pro version had increased. I initially just wanted a temporary alternative, but after a week of testing, I found myself sweating over the automated integration tests.

It turns out, prejudice is often a pit we dig for ourselves.

Many peers have a stereotype about domestic AI programming tools: slow completion, poor logic, and a tendency to be clueless, at best a “high-level code snippet generator.” I used to think this way too. I even slammed the table while drinking with friends, saying, “Without Cursor, domestic developers can’t even write a decent CRUD.”

Looking back at that statement, it was indeed a bit arrogant and laughable.

In these seven days, I didn’t treat it as a “toy” but instead used it directly in a production-level environment:

• Refactored a legacy Spring Boot authentication module (about 3000 lines of historical code)
• Completed unit tests for core interfaces (coverage requirement of 85%+)
• Wrote a data scraping script with anti-crawling strategies

What was the result?

The completion speed didn’t falter, and the contextual understanding was consistent. What surprised me the most was that it could accurately find the configuration file paths hidden under the messy directory structure in src/main/resources.

I had prepared myself to “curse while manually correcting things,” but all I saw was a pile of runnable code.

It wasn’t that the tool was inadequate; it was my perception of it that had been tainted by the bias of thinking ’the foreign moon is rounder.’

1. Cursor’s ‘Elegance’ vs. Trae’s ‘Rough Path’

Fairly speaking, Cursor is still that gentleman that has refined the experience to perfection. Press the Tab key, and code flows out like water, so smooth it becomes addictive.

But Trae takes a more brutal and practical approach.

What changed my mind was its SOLO mode (Agent autonomous execution).

In Cursor, if you want to implement a new feature, you have to create files, import dependencies, adjust parameters, and write prompts. You feel like a contractor, and the AI is a compliant apprentice that needs step-by-step instructions.

In Trae, you can simply say, “Create a user management module with JWT authentication and Swagger documentation.”

It will create directories, configure routes, write interfaces, connect to the database, and generate documentation all by itself. You just sit back and watch the console scroll.

Occasionally, it might make silly mistakes, like misspelling variable names or forgetting to add null pointer checks. But fixing those takes just a few minutes.

Cursor gives you a perfectly tuned racing car, but you have to hold the steering wheel yourself.

Trae provides you with an electric bike with training wheels; it may look ugly, but it can truly take you to your destination.

For those of us who are constantly chased by demands and have no time for “ceremony,” being able to leave work on time is often more important than the elegance of the code.

2. What Are We Being Arrogant About?

Some commenters will likely say, “Trae is only popular because it’s free; when it comes to enterprise-level scenarios, you still need to rely on Cursor.”

This statement is half right and half wrong.

It’s true that Cursor has a deep ecosystem. The plugin market, model switching, and community accumulation are moats built over time.

But it’s wrong to measure a tool that is still growing with the yardstick of “enterprise-level” while forgetting that most small and medium teams and individual developers just want a “tool that works, doesn’t choke, and is free.”

Trae’s progress lies in its humility.

It doesn’t talk about “changing the development paradigm”; it simply asks, “Bro, have you finished writing the code today? If not, I can help you run a few lines.”

This kind of down-to-earth approach is something many high-end tools can never learn.

We often complain that domestic tools aren’t refined enough, but we forget that refinement is often built with real money and lengthy iterations. Trae directly tells you: as long as you are willing to put in the effort, even a rough man can embroider.

3. To Say Something Unpleasant

Seven days ago, I uninstalled Cursor to “find faults.”

Seven days later, I didn’t reinstall it because it was “truly fragrant.”

Prejudice is like nearsightedness. If you refuse to wear glasses, you will always feel the world is blurry and then blame the world for not being clear enough.

Domestic AI programming tools do have gaps. Ecosystem, stability, and performance in extreme scenarios all need time to refine.

But the gap is narrowing, while our arrogance remains stagnant.

Tools have no borders; usability is the ultimate truth.

If you still scoff at something just because “it’s domestic,” I suggest you don’t just read reviews; try it yourself for seven days.

What if you also have been “prejudiced”?

That’s about it.