v5: Cursor special

Powered by Cursor. Money on my mind.

Author

Nikita Kakuev
May 23, 2025

📍 Brighton, 🇬🇧 

🥃 TL;DR

  • HMV is shocking 😱 

  • We now pay Serverless a lot of monies at Sains

  • I’m a Cursor Bro now. Full year commitment!

  • Stitch is a disappointment

  • Microsoft releasing PostgreSQL extension for VSCode is the best thing that happened this week

  • LOADS of Cursor and AI development resources and links 🚚

Happy Friday, y’all!

Always starting with the most newsworthy thing that happened: I realised that HMV still sells DVDs and BlueRays. 🤯

Not only that, they sell 3 for £50! 🤯 £50! 🤯 Not £5, not £10… 50! £20 for 1! Who’s buying these for this price? Especially on the current recession market! 🤯

How is HMV able to afford a huge prime location at Westfield Shepherd’s Bush???

Shocking.

Anyway, let’s talk about money. This will be the main theme of this newsletter.

Do you know how tools like Serverless make money?

Well, long story short, at Sainsbury’s we’re using Serverless, and have been using it for a while since v3. And everyone hates it. It just doesn’t fit our use case.

Now our DevSecOps discovered vulnerabilities and we now have to decide whether we upgrade to v4, which is a lot of effort, or we switch to something else.

Another very important factor is that v4 is paid.

So now we have to choose what’s more expensive

  1. Stay on v3 and risk it with vulnerabilities.

  2. Switch to a paid v4.

  3. Switch to something like a constantly running server with Dockerfile and what not.

a) is not an option. c) is too expensive and too lengthy and impossible to do when you have consulting companies doing work for you and everyone is in the push-push-push cycle.

So guess which option we’re going with?

Serverless is a winner in this one. 🫠

So I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of tool I can make, you know to become a successful millionaire with a Lambo. No luck yet. Still thinking. I do know HOW I’m doing it though - with the help of AI.

Gergely mentioned that with the help of AI tools many came back to their side projects and even made a significant progress.

The last mile is always the hardest, so not surprised that side projects are still abandoned.

Nonetheless, AI is still helpful, so this week I paid $192 for Cursor Pro.

This is my commitment to AI. I mean, becoming a 10x dev, powered by AI.

Maybe being more productive will help me become richer. 😄

Your own venture is one of not many things today that we can rely on if we want to make more money than what’s currently being offered on the market.

Here’s an article that caught my eye. There Sean is sharing some practical advice for us, engineers, on how to stay relevant and employed nowadays.

Practical advice for engineers in these troubled times

Since 2023, the rise of interest rates has caused a sea change in how software companies relate to their engineers. It’s harder to be a software engineer now…

www.seangoedecke.com/in-these-troubled-times

Bottom line is - ignore the processes and “side quests”, stay calm and keep shipping. Preferrably in the profit/revenue generating department/centre.

Me

Talking about the news, Google had an I/O event. There’s a lot there, here’s a helpful thread that highlights top products.

I got excited about Stitch

But it gave me a really shit design. A design I don’t need anything or anyone for. A design I can make with basic Bootstrap components (remember Bootstrap?).

So I’m not excited anymore. Expectations - lowered! 😒

Realtime translation also sounds amazing. Translators and language teachers wouldn’t be completely out of job, but there will be less demand, I’d say.

What’s more exciting is Microsoft released PostgreSQL extension for VSCode! 🤩

Announcing a new IDE for PostgreSQL in VS Code from Microsoft

techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/announcing-a-new-ide-for-postgresql-in-vs-code-from-microsoft/4414648

That means I don’t need switching windows between code editor and DBeaver anymore.

Or I will still need to switch between windows if using Cursor. Because it’s not there. Does cursor have no access to VSCode extensions marketplace? I thought they did, how does that work?

DBeaver is still one love though! Oh so many memories with it!

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for this week. See you next time! Stay productive! 🚀

🎓️ Top Learning Materials of the Week

This week I've spent a lot of time on making my IDE work for me, so here’s what I found useful 👇️ 

Unlock GitHub Copilot’s Full Potential: Advanced Features You’re Overlooking! - Specifically enhancing the context part, don’t worry about the rest

Master the core principles of prompt engineering with GitHub Copilot: SSS prompting is great. Never thought about it explicitly

These Hidden Cursor Features Will Make You 10x More Productive - Short and helpful. Amazing! 🔥

⚒️ Tools of the Week

You guessed it, also dedicated to Cursor.