I personally like Windsurf a bit more than Cursor, but recently I've been far more productive using Claude Code with an IDE than I was using a VSC-derived AIDE.

My sweet spot at the moment is Claude Desktop with mcp servers for editing and aider --watch for quick fixes. Claude Code uses way, way, way too many tokens on the large project i work most on.

Get one of the max plans! It pays for itself.

> Claude Code uses way, way, way too many tokens on the large project i work most on.

That's a very fair critique, and it makes the pay-as-you-go pricing model (vs. one of their subscription options) a completely unrealistic option for doing anything serious with Claude Code.

You don't get paid for programming?

Luckily i do, but i mean it triggers the api limit in 10 minutes amount of tokens

> * I've been far more productive using Claude Code with an IDE*

Curious why proportionately few seem to find this a better way of working.

Does it have to do with familiarity with XP or pair programming? What had you trying in IDE first, and what prompted you to try switching?

Have you used https://aider.chat to compare? If so, thoughts?