Best AI Tools for Programming
Programmers are among the most avid users of AI tools. They rely on specific AI tools for programming that help them code faster and with fewer errors.
These tools have been trained on millions of lines of code and can “handle” pretty much all programming languages, though you can expect the best results with the most popular ones — such as Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, C++, Go, Ruby, and so on.
These results are related to enabling many useful functions, including automatic generation of documentation, code completion, and suggestion, as well as the ability to transform written text into code. Or to transfer code from one programming language to the other.
Here are some of the best AI tools for programming:
BlackBox AI by Course Connect
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Support for 20+ programming languages
- Search across 100M+ open source code repos
- Quickly turn any question into code
- Only the Legendary plan includes web-based IDE
- All plans are yearly (though there is free trial)
Blackbox AI is an AI-powered coding helper that helps programmers “”code as fast as they think.”” It offers advice and automates some operations, assisting programmers in completing their coding in more than 20 programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Ruby, and others.
Blackbox AI evaluates the code as you write with AI algorithms, offering functions, variables, and code fragments that are most appropriate given the context. Additionally, it includes a convenient search across over 100 million repos directly from VS Code — delivering the best code snippets in a snap.
Also included are rather sophisticated debugging and error-handling features. Plus, it works with almost every IDE in the browser (Legendary plan).
GitHub Copilot by GitHub
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Research has found GitHub Copilot helps developers code faster
- Allow programmers to navigate unfamiliar coding frameworks and languages
- Can autocomplete based on the current code base
- Privacy concerns: as a cloud-based, it requires continuous communication with the GitHub Copilot servers
GitHub Copilot is a cloud-based AI tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to assist programmers by autocompleting code. Available as an extension for Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and the JetBrains suite of IDEs, it supports many popular programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go.
GitHub Copilot can draw context from comments and code to suggest individual lines and whole functions instantly. It is powered by Codex, a generative pre-trained AI model created by OpenAI that has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.
According to GitHub’s own evaluation, users accepted, on average, 26% of all completions shown by GitHub Copilot. They have also found that on average more than 27% of developers’ code files were generated by GitHub Copilot, and in certain languages like Python, that goes up to 40%.
Amazon Q Developer
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Supports all the popular programming languages and IDEs
- Can scan your code for security vulnerabilities
- Generous free individual tier (free) with unlimited code suggestions, reference tracking, and 50 security scans per month
- There are other great AI coding assistants out there - is Amazon Q Developer the best for you?
Formerly called Amazon CodeWhisperer, Amazon Q Developer is the tech giant’s AI coding assistant that is built to get more done faster. Trained on billions of lines of code, it can generate code suggestions ranging from snippets to full functions in real time based on your comments and existing code.
The tool can flag or filter code suggestions that resemble open-source training data, providing you with the associated open-source project’s repository URL and license so that you can more easily review them and add attribution.
Also, it allows you to scan your code to detect hard-to-find vulnerabilities and get code suggestions to remediate them immediately. Amazon Q Developer will help you align to best practices for tackling security vulnerabilities, such as those outlined by the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), or those that don’t meet crypto library best practices and other similar security best practices.
It supports 15 programming languages, including Python, Java, and JavaScript, and can sing along all the popular IDEs, such as VS Code, IntelliJ IDEA, AWS Cloud9, AWS Lambda console, JupyterLab and Amazon SageMaker Studio.
You can customize Amazon Q Developer to generate more relevant recommendations by making it aware of your internal libraries, APIs, packages, classes, and methods, significantly accelerating development.
During the preview phase, Amazon ran a productivity challenge and participants who used Amazon Q Developer were 27% more likely to complete tasks successfully and did so an average of 57% faster than those who did not use Q Developer.
So it works and if you’re a developer, you’ll want to consider including it in your toolbox.
Replit AI by Replit, Inc.
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Code completion alone can save a ton of time
- And the same goes for code generation, which could be very handy for many standard functions
- Chat and code explain features are extremely handy for beginners
- Not the only game in town, with GitHub users mostly sticking to GitHub Copilot
Replit AI is an AI-enabled tool provided by Replit, an online integrated development environment (IDE) aimed at enhancing the coding experience.
Similarly to generative coding tools, it offers code completion that can provide contextual code suggestions as you type. On their end, developers can accept these suggestions by pressing the tab key.
You can also get Replit AI to explain the code by highlighting a piece of code; what you’ll get is a step-by-step explanation of it in plain English. Or you can use it to rewrite a selected block of code to, for instance, enhance its readability or efficiency.
Or you can generate new code by providing a natural language prompt describing what you want to achieve – and let Replit AI do its magic for you.
Finally, there is the chat-based AI assistant that can answer your coding-related queries directly in the workspace without needing to leave the page.
Replit AI is available with Replit’s Pro plan and with Replit’s Cycles for 1,000 cycles per month. Once activated, all features are readily available in your coding workspace.
Tabnine
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Can generate entire functions within your favorite editor
- You can run it on your own machine (privacy friendly)
- Major companies love it: LG, Nike, Amazon, Bloomberg, etc.
- Some developers prefer Copilot
Tabnine offers an AI assistant for software developers that uses generative AI technology to predict and suggest their next lines of code based on context and syntax. As such, it allows developers to code faster with whole-line and full-function code completions, as well as to use natural language for coding. The service can run on a local computer, on a server inside a firewall, or in the cloud.
According to the company, Tabnine’s advanced AI models are trained from the ground up on code, and each model is optimized for a specific language or domain — enabling auto-completions with unprecedented accuracy.
Tabnine supports many popular languages, including JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, and Bash, to name a few. It will also integrate with all popular IDEs, such as VS Code, IntelliJ, Sublime, Visual Studio, PyCharm, WebStorm, Android Studio, GoLand, Emacs, Vim, Neovim, PhpStorm, AppCode, Eclipse, and more.
How can AI tools help programmers?
AI tools for programming help developers in multiple ways, offering features that dramatically improve the efficiency of every programmer. These include:
-
Code completion
Just start coding and let AI finish it for you. That’s what many of these tools can do for programmers. It’s like having another programmer kicking in to complete the code they’ve started working on.
-
Code suggestions
Or get code suggestions based on what you’re coding at that time. AI can figure out what your software is all about and provide suggestions related to the next line of code, the next function, and more. Also, it can detect errors before they cause any problems.
-
Text to code
AI can also understand written text and create a function out of it. For instance, you can ask AI to create a piece of code that would take one input and generate some other output out of it. You can further build from there until you get the solution you need.
-
Instant function creation
Related to the previous point, if you name your functions properly (in a way that is understandable to the human reader) – AI can generate the entire function for you. Or, again, you can just ask it to create such a function for you with text-to-code functionality.
-
Documentation
Another important use case of AI tools for programming is their ability to document your code. Instead of spending hours ensuring that every line that needs to be documented has the needed text, AI can do that for you in mere seconds.
-
Write better code
Ultimately, with its suggestions, recommendations, and completion – AI will help you write better code. And that would be the code that is easier to understand by other programmers and that has fewer bugs and errors.
To sum it up, using AI for programming is essential these days. It helps programmers code faster and do it with fewer errors. And unsurprisingly, these tools are already being adopted by developers across the world. Have you tried them yet? (if you’re a programmer)