Top 5 AIs that speed up your coding

AI-based coding assistants have become an integral part of the development process, they help you generate code, understand code, search for projects and perform various tasks with the help of hints and code. Cloud-based IDE platforms like Google Colab and Deepnote also offer AI-based coding features to help generate code and solve problems.

In this article, we will highlight five AI-powered coding assistants that deserve a closer look. All of them come with VSCode extensions and are easy to customise. Just install them and you can get used to a new, simpler way of programming.

1. GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is an artificial intelligence tool that helps programmers write code more efficiently. By installing the Copilot extension in VS Code, developers will be able to generate and understand code, as well as customise the editor's autocomplete features. Compared to other tools, Copilot is a mature product that provides the most relevant and accurate advice. The new chat feature allows developers to generate, modify and improve code using natural language, even when they are on the go. In addition, the integrated chat allows you to generate code directly in a text editor. The only downside to GitHub Copilot is that it is a paid tool. However, if you're a full-time developer or software engineer, a few dollars a month is a great deal.

2. Codeium

Codeium is a widely known free tool that has recently become popular. It offers most of the features of GitHub Copilot, and the best part is that it's free for personal use. Using Codeium, you can ask a question about a file and it will read it and give you an appropriate answer. You can also ask to rewrite, explain, improve or fix the code. There is also an autocomplete function, but since Codeium's autocomplete is not always accurate, it is recommended that you use the old Python autocomplete function. The only drawback of Codeium is that it doesn't always generate the latest version of the code.

3. Cody

Cody is an artificial intelligence-based code writing assistant designed to increase the speed of writing and understanding code. It offers similar features to Codeium such as chat, commands, code interpretation and auto-complete. It is available in both free and professional versions. I've been using Cody for almost two months now, and it worked very smoothly until I started using it for data science and machine learning projects. Unfortunately, I found that the code it generated was inaccurate because it didn't take context into account. However, based on personal experience with Codeium and Cody, I found that Cody could not understand the code and sometimes produced inaccurate autocomplete suggestions. Therefore, I prefer Codeium over Cody.

4. Code GPT

I recently discovered Code GPT: Chat & AI Agents, which integrates all the latest large-scale language models and offers a number of features that impressed me. This extension offers many features including AI chat support, code interpretation, error checking and auto-complete. This extension is free to use if you have access to the OpenAI API or other platforms. I tested it with Google AI, Anthiopic AI, and the OpenAI API. The Claude 2.1 API is fast, but the accuracy is low. To make it more usable, developers need to reduce autocomplete latency and solve the problem of generating inaccurate responses. One solution is to use Codeium for autocomplete and CodeGPT for code generation and problem solving.

5. Tabnine

Tabnine is an artificial intelligence coding assistant that speeds up and simplifies the software development process. It also ensures code privacy, security and compliance. Tabnine is currently used by over a million developers across industries and has been downloaded 7 million times on VSCode. There is a free version of Tabnine, but it may not be as effective as the Pro version. If you need better coding help, it's worth considering purchasing the Pro version. However, the autocomplete feature in the free version is still fast and accurate. If you want to try Tabnine, you can take advantage of the 90-day trial version. Keep in mind that you will need to enter your payment details to access the trial version.

Summary

Code assistants with artificial intelligence are revolutionising software development by increasing programmers' efficiency and productivity. In this article, we've outlined the top five AI-powered code assistants that we think everyone who struggles with logic, formatting, and testing code should use.

Implementing one or more of these assistants into your workflow will increase productivity, generate and understand code faster, and solve problems faster so you can focus more on coding. Ultimately, these AI assistants will help developers spend less time working on code, which means more time developing great software. Try them out on your next project!