Universities Are Part of the Cursor Resistance

I recently reported on the software engineers who have resisted using AI coding tools such as Cursor and Claude Code, even when their managers strongly encourage their use. AI still has technical limitations—and it threatens to make engineering jobs obsolete, they say. 

But there’s a wrinkle to this story: some engineering students have been slow to embrace these tools because they’ve been told not to use them. Three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley told me that their professors typically ban coding help from chatbots and AI coding tools. 

And there’s a good reason for that: “I'm pretty sure that Cursor can one-shot most Berkeley assignments,” one of these students said. In other words, Cursor could ace their homework on the first try.

So these students were in for some culture shock when they spent the past summer interning at Amazon, where their managers strongly encouraged them to use AI coding tools. When they used Cline, the coding agent of choice for their teams, their managers told them to keep up the good work. When they didn’t use Cline, their managers asked why not.