AI Coding Assistant Refuses To Write Code, Tells User To Learn Programming Instead

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Saturday, a developer using Cursor AI for a racing game project hit an unexpected roadblock when the programming assistant abruptly refused to continue generating code, instead offering some unsolicited career advice. According to a bug report on Cursor's official forum, after producing approximately 750 to 800 lines of code (what the user calls 'locs'), the AI assistant halted work and delivered a refusal message: 'I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly.'

The AI didn't stop at merely refusing -- it offered a paternalistic justification for its decision, stating that 'Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities.' The developer who encountered this refusal, posting under the username 'janswist,' expressed frustration at hitting this limitation after 'just 1h of vibe coding' with the Pro Trial version. 'Not sure if LLMs know what they are for (lol), but doesn't matter as much as a fact that I can't go through 800 locs,' the developer wrote. 'Anyone had similar issue? It's really limiting at this point and I got here after just 1h of vibe coding.' One forum member replied, 'never saw something like that, i have 3 files with 1500+ loc in my codebase (still waiting for a refactoring) and never experienced such thing.'

Cursor AI's abrupt refusal represents an ironic twist in the rise of 'vibe coding' -- a term coined by Andrej Karpathy that describes when developers use AI tools to generate code based on natural language descriptions without fully understanding how it works. While vibe coding prioritizes speed and experimentation by having users simply describe what they want and accept AI suggestions, Cursor's philosophical pushback seems to directly challenge the effortless 'vibes-based' workflow its users have come to expect from modern AI coding assistants.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.