A few weeks ago, the name Sualeh Asif coupled with the acronym MIT, began making rounds on social media as people discovered the young man from Pakistan is one of the minds behind Cursor, the AI-powered code editor valued at $9.9 billion, which is taking the AI startup scene by storm.
The Cursor team made its first appearance in Pakistan at a meetup in Islamabad attended by over hundred builders, tech enthusiasts and students eager to take part in the future of programming.
The event was hosted at the National Incubation Centre and featured a live demonstration of Cursor’s build-on-command capabilities by its Pakistan Ambassador, Yahya Qureshi, a talk by Antematter engineer, Zohaib Adnan, on how the product has changed programming at their company and a Q&A session with Cursor developer, Juan Batista Martinez, who joined on zoom.
Cursor allows developers to generate code and build programmes simply by describing what they want it to do. In response, the software prints out ready-to-use lines of code which can be further edited through additional prompts to incorporate new features, fix bugs and more.
“For those unfamiliar with the concept, this is known as vibe coding,” explained the Cursor ambassador, Yahya. “You no longer need to type out thousands of lines of code one by one. You could be out for a walk or driving, and you simply need to have entered a task into Cursor, so that by the time you have reached your destination, your code will be ready,” he added enthusiastically.
Several tech companies, including Taleemabad, Eynvision, and others, showed up to the event, curious about how Cursor can help upgrade their work. “Since using Cursor, our developers at Antematter are spending much less time doing the grunt work and more time innovating and investing energy in coming up with critical solutions,” said Zohaib Adnan as he shared how AI has transformed development.
Cursor developer Juan Martinez echoed the same thoughts when asked about what vibe coding means for the future of engineers in the job market. “AI isn’t here to replace engineers. We need humans for their ability to exercise creativity and think critically,” he said. “Cursor is not about eliminating the work humans do. It’s about what can be achieved when humans work alongside the power of AI.”
Many from the audience posed questions about Cursor’s features and future updates to Juan. Some even shared feedback based on their own experience using the software. The Cursor team was overwhelmed by the response and the interest shown by the community in Pakistan, with the ambassador saying that he was amazed to see the projects people have been working on using Cursor, which they shared on the Cursor Pakistan WhatsApp group. “This is only the beginning. We plan to host many more meetups, including workshops and hackathons across Pakistan,” announced Yahya.
The attendees expressed their satisfaction at the chance to interact with the Cursor team in Pakistan, while others on social media expressed that they could not wait for a similar event in their cities. “Events like these are a great thing for the tech space in Pakistan,” said a computer science student, Amama. “Opportunities to interact with skilled people in the field are rare for us, so this was very refreshing. I just wish there were more girls participating at such events,” she said noting the lack of women attendees.
Highlight: Organisers announced plans for more events, including workshops and hackathons
