7 Best AI Coding Assistants in 2024
By Alex • Updated Jun 29, 2024
AI coding assistants are intelligent tools that help developers automate and improve their coding process, saving time and enhancing productivity.
After spending hours testing 20 different options on the market, I've narrowed down the list to the top 7 AI coding assistants you should check out in 2024.
Best AI Coding Assistants
What Makes a Great AI Coding Assistant?
A great AI coding assistant should possess the following features:
- Accuracy: The AI should be able to provide accurate code suggestions and completions based on the context.
- Language Support: It should support multiple programming languages, catering to a wide range of developers.
- Ease of Use: The AI assistant should be easy to integrate with your preferred code editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
- Adaptability: It should learn from your coding style and habits, offering personalized suggestions over time.
- Continuous Updates: The AI should be regularly updated to stay abreast of the latest programming trends and best practices.
1. GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that helps developers with contextualized advice throughout the coding process. It offers code suggestions, chat help in the IDE, and explanations in GitHub.
Key Features
- Real-time Code Suggestions: It suggests code completions as you type, using your project's context and style.
- Context-Aware Coding Support: It helps with explanations, debugging, and security issues.
- Chat Functionality: You can ask all kinds of programming questions and get quick answers.
- Integration with Multiple Editors: Works as an extension in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Vim, Neovim, JetBrains IDEs, and Azure Data Studio.
My Take
I think GitHub Copilot is super helpful for developers. It boosts productivity with its real-time suggestions and coding support. It's a powerful AI tool that's great for both individual developers and teams.
2. Devin
Devin is the world's first fully autonomous AI software engineer. It can write code based on prompts, debug issues, deploy applications, and learn new technologies to tackle unique challenges.
Key Features
- Autonomous Coding: Plans and executes complex engineering tasks, keeping the context in mind at every step.
- Learning and Adaptation: Learns to use new technologies and adapts to new challenges.
- Real-Time Collaboration: Reports progress in real-time, accepts feedback, and makes design choices with users.
- Bug Fixing and Deployment: Finds and fixes bugs autonomously and handles end-to-end app deployment.
My Take
I'm really impressed by Devin. Its ability to learn and adapt is amazing. This AI can make developers' lives easier and boost productivity. Overall, a game-changer for coding tasks.
3. Replit Ghostwriter
Replit Ghostwriter is an AI coding assistant. It helps you write code faster by offering real-time suggestions. It works really well with the Replit platform, making it useful for all kinds of coders.
Key Features
- Real-time Code Completion: Completes your code as you type, saving time.
- Code Explanation: Explains complex code clearly to help you understand it better.
- Code Transformation: Refactors code and lets you switch between languages easily.
- Collaborative AI Chat: Lets you and your teammates build software together.
My Take
I find Replit Ghostwriter super useful for coding.
The real-time code completion saves me so much time. The code explanation feature really helps me understand tricky parts of the code. Overall, it's a fantastic tool for boosting coding productivity.
4. Tabnine
Tabnine is an AI coding assistant that helps developers with their coding tasks. It provides tools for code creation, explanations, testing, documentation, and bug fixing, making development faster and more efficient.
Key Features
- Code Creation and Explanation: Generates code and offers explanations to help understand it better.
- Test and Documentation Generation: Automatically creates tests and documentation, saving time.
- Bug Fixes and Code Refactoring: Identifies and fixes bugs, refactors code for better structure.
- Personalized Assistance: Adapts to individual coding styles and preferences for tailored support.
My Take
I think Tabnine is a really useful tool for developers. It can generate and explain code, and even refactor it, which makes it a great asset for any coding project.
Overall, Tabnine can really help boost productivity and improve code quality.
5. ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a conversational AI model that interacts with users in a dialogue format. It can handle follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge wrong ideas, and refuse inappropriate requests.
Key Features
- Conversational Interface: Easy to ask questions and get responses in a chat-like format.
- Code Debugging: Helps identify coding errors and suggest fixes.
- Code Generation: Can create code snippets for various tasks, though accuracy may vary.
- Technical Guidance: Provides general advice and explanations on different programming topics.
My Take
In my experience, ChatGPT is good for basic tech advice and sometimes generates useful code snippets.
However, it often misses the mark on complex tasks. It's a handy tool, but not yet reliable enough to replace search engines or Stack Overflow.
6. Codeium
Codeium is a free AI coding assistant for various IDEs. It offers features like autocomplete, search, and chat to help developers work more efficiently.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Autocomplete: Provides smart code completion suggestions.
- Intelligent Search: Offers AI-driven search to find code and files quickly.
- AI-Powered Chat: Can generate, explain, and refactor code.
- Multi-Language Support: Supports 70+ languages and integrates with 40+ editors.
My Take
I've found Codeium to be very helpful. It understands my coding logic well and gives useful suggestions.
It's simple to use and really boosts my productivity. A great addition to any developer's toolkit.
7. OpenAI Codex
OpenAI Codex is an AI tool that turns natural language into code. It's built on GPT-3 and trained on loads of source code from places like GitHub. It’s designed to help developers by understanding and writing code in many programming languages.
Key Features
- Multi-language support: Proficient in over a dozen programming languages like Python, JavaScript, Go, Perl, and more.
- Natural language interface: Understands and executes simple commands given in natural language.
- General-purpose programming: Useful for tasks like code translation, explanation, and refactoring.
- Improved memory: Has a memory of 14KB for Python code, which helps it consider more context compared to GPT-3's 4KB.
My Take
I think OpenAI Codex is amazing for automating repetitive coding tasks and making development faster.
Being able to speak to the AI in English and get actual working code is fantastic. This tool could really change how we write code and work with computers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are AI coding assistants?
AI coding assistants are tools that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to support developers. They offer features such as code generation, auto-completions, debugging help, and more, enabling developers to code faster and reduce errors.
Can AI replace human programmers?
Not really. AI tools are designed to assist programmers, not replace them. They help expedite coding processes and reduce error rates, but they still need human direction. In fact, AI's role in programming is to empower developers to work more efficiently, not to put them out of a job.
How do AI coding assistants work?
AI coding assistants use machine learning models to analyze the code and provide suggestions based on the context. They can also learn from your coding habits and patterns to offer personalized suggestions over time.
Are AI coding assistants worth it?
AI coding assistants can save developers time and reduce errors, making them a valuable investment for those looking to improve their coding efficiency.
Can AI coding assistants write code from scratch?
AI coding assistants can generate code based on the context and user inputs. However, they are not yet capable of writing complex programs from scratch without any input.
Final Thoughts
AI coding assistants are invaluable tools for programmers looking to enhance their productivity and write better code.
The 7 AI coding assistants mentioned in this article offer a range of features and come at different price points, ensuring that there's an option suitable for every developer.
So, don't hesitate to give these tools a try and see how they can help you supercharge your programming skills.
