Artificial intelligence has been a game changer in many industries, and software development is no exception. AI coding tools and assistants have revolutionized many programming processes, such as writing, debugging, and optimizing code. In the last few years, AI tools have significantly evolved and become a crucial part of the software development industry. So, let’s talk about AI coding assistants, their advantages, and the best tools on the market that will help countless development teams in 2024.

What is an AI Coding Tool?

AI coding tools are software applications that make use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to support IT professionals in key aspects of development. These include tasks, like writing, debugging, testing, and documenting code. AI coding assistants can adjust to coding styles used by developers, learn from input, and even offer valuable suggestions and enhancements during the development process.

Criteria for Choosing the Best AI Coding Software

While selecting the best AI for coding in 2024, we considered several key criteria:

  • Usability. AI tools for coding should be relatively easy to use. They should have intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and seamlessly integrate within programmers’ existing workflows. Also, AI coding assistants need to be compatible with popular integrated development environments (IDEs) and be able to adapt easily to different coding styles and preferences.
  • Features. Today, comprehensive AI programming tools should offer a wide range of advanced features. The most essential features are the ability to provide accurate code completion, error detection, optimization suggestions, and support for different programming languages.
  • Integration Capabilities. These capabilities are essential for AI coding software. It is crucial that the software can seamlessly integrate with coding tools, as well as popular systems such as IDEs, version control systems and project management tools.
  • User Feedback. When selecting the AI coding assistant, user feedback plays a role in making an informed decision. Reviews and testimonials from users provide insights into how the assistant performs in real-life situations, its reliability and the level of customer support provided by its developers.
  • Continuous Development and Support. On tool developers’ commitment to continuous improvement and top-notch customer support depends on their product will remain relevant and effective in the software development industry.

Best AI Programming Tools

Here are the ten best AI coding tools that will continue to provide high-quality assistance to software developers in 2024.

GitHub Copilot

This AI coding assistant was developed by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI and utilized the potential of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning models. Trained on large datasets from numerous sources, GitHub Copilot supports multiple programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python, and uses natural language processing algorithms created by OpenAI.

GitHub Copilot supports popular code editors, such as Neovim, Visual Studio Code, and JetBrains IDE. Among other useful features are AI-powered suggestions based on programming language, frameworks, and plug-ins used on the project, code generation, and code completion capabilities. Due to its impressive list of features and multi-language capabilities, this tool is used for various purposes, including AI SaaS product development.

OpenAI Codex

AI coding tool by OpenAI has a quick and user-friendly setup, runs on machine learning and AI algorithms, and can provide code based on natural language prompts. Also, you can easily use Codex for technical documentation generation, adding comments to your code, or quickly finding useful libraries and APIs online. Trained on GPT-3, this AI assistant can process queries even from beginners and be trained with custom datasets to emulate your coding style.

GitHub Copilot, which was also partially developed by OpenAI differs from Codex primarily in its multi-language capabilities. While Codex focuses mainly on Python, it also provides support for Swift, Perl and PHP. Currently, Codex is accessible at no cost while GitHub Copilot requires a subscription fee of $10. Therefore with its functionalities, this AI programming tool remains a viable option, for developers mindful of their budgets.

TabNine

This Artificial Intelligence programming tool was developed specifically for people with coding experience and mainly specializes in code competition. TabNine can predict and suggest the next line of code based on syntax and other data it collects, significantly speeding up your coding workflow. Also, this AI assistant reviews code in real time and can quickly identify errors and mistakes.

Tabline is compatible with all the Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), like Eclipse, IntelliJ Android Studio and more. It supports programming languages including Java, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. Additionally, Tabline can be trained using both open-source data and proprietary business data. Tabinet provides pricing options and individual users have the option to use it for free.

Codiga

Codiga is one of the programming AI assistants that are more focused on code review and not on code generation. This AI tool can provide some code snippets but can’t write whole lines of code. Codiga’s strengths lie in finding mistakes and errors, optimizing code, and providing suggestions.

The programming tool provides the option to define custom rules for analyzing code. Additionally, Codiga examines your software development project to identify integrations and libraries that may lead to problems while also inspecting the code, for common cyber threats and possible vulnerabilities.

Snyk

Another AI tool focused more not on code writing but on cyber security issues within your project. Snyk is powered by DeepCodeAI and uses numerous machine learning algorithms and generative AI, which makes it more accurate in finding threats and vulnerabilities. This tool runs in real-time, identifying vulnerabilities and providing remediation advice for developers.

Snyk enables human coders to set custom rules for the project, review proposed fixes, and decline them in case they are incorrect. Most users can start using this tool immediately, with no learning curve to AI-powered solutions. It makes Snyk the best AI for coding highly secure digital products.

Sourcery

This tool’s main focus is code refactoring assistance and providing code suggestions. Sourcery performs real-time reviews and provides immediate feedback. It allows software developers to quickly get rid of bugs, errors, duplicated code, and bad programming practices within their projects.

Sourcery allows programmers to create custom rules for tasks like removing duplicate code and fixing bugs. This streamlines their workflows and improves efficiency. Although currently limited to Python, the developers are actively working on expanding its compatibility with other programming languages.

MutableAI

This AI code generator is known for features such as code auto-completion powered by Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, custom test generation, and prompt-driven development. MutableAI allows developers to easily refactor, document, and add types to a project’s code, ensuring higher quality of the final product.

AI programming assistant supports several popular languages, including JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, and Solidify, and IDEs, such as JetBrains and Visual Studio Code. Impressive integration capabilities and a wide range of features make MutableAI one of the best tools for creating high-quality code.

Replit

This AI for coding significantly enhances the coding process by offering comments, code explanations, auto-completion, error detection, and correction capabilities. Replit empowers developers to work faster and produce high-quality code. Also, the tool has an advanced online editor programmers can use to write code and collaborate with other IT professionals on the projects.

Replit supports more than 20 programming languages, including HTML, Kotlin, Elixir, Rust, and CSS. Built-in chat within IDE allows developers to quickly search for answers while dealing with unfamiliar frameworks, libraries, and tools. Combined with impressive explanations and comments, advanced mistake detection and correction, and collaborative features, it makes Replit one of the best code generators with educational experience.

Hugging Face

This framework for AI solutions that focus on natural language processing can assist you in text generation, translation, summarization, extraction of information, and answering questions. Skilled software developers can leverage Hugging Face to build AI-powered code review and analysis bots. These Artificial Intelligence bots can also offer you insights for improving a product’s performance and even product boilerplate code.

Due to its impressive NLP processing capabilities, Hugging Face enables developers to create software products that can process large language models quickly. Computer vision capabilities allow IT specialists to leverage pre-trained models for object detection and image classification. Hugging Face is compatible with popular machine-learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.

PolyCoder

This programming assistant developed by Carnegie Mellon University employees not only has open-source code but also provides access to its training data for anyone interested. People from all over the world can add or improve PolyCoder datasets, which leads to never-ending improvement. This AI tool is based on ChatGPT-2 and trained in 12 programming languages.

PolyCoder’s creators claim that despite their tool being able to write AI code in several languages, it is strongest in C# programming. With its source code being available to a wide audience, PolyCoder constantly receives information from different users and depositories, improves its natural language processing capabilities, and learns new programming languages.

Future Trends and Predictions

Looking ahead to the future it is evident that AI will remain a component in the software development industry. Let’s delve into the trends within the AI coding tools sector.

  • NLP for Code Analysis and Generation. One prominent trend is leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) for code analysis and generation. NLP will continue to play a role in the Artificial Intelligence domain, particularly when it comes to generating and analyzing code. The incorporation of NLP capabilities will enhance software maintenance, documentation, and updates. Additionally, chatbots and virtual assistants will become more indispensable, for programmers as they offer guidance and prompt responses to various queries.
  • AI-driven Automation. Automating repetitive and mundane tasks is a key driver of efficiency in the software development industry. AI test automation frameworks can quickly adapt to changing codebases and efficiently prioritize test cases. AI implementation in optimizing deployment pipelines ensures enhanced coding potential and an error-free development process.
  • Recommendation Systems. Recommendation systems are gaining popularity, among software developers. These AI-powered systems can provide suggestions for frameworks, libraries, and best practices based on the coder’s programming task, project requirements, and coding style. By personalizing the recommendations these systems can greatly speed up the development process. and enhance performance.
  • Collaboration Between AI and Human Coders. While AI code assistants have made advancements they are still far from replacing developers entirely. Various limitations and ethical considerations surround their use. However, in the coming years, we can expect to witness a collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. This partnership will amplify software developers’ capabilities while allowing them to dedicate time to problem-solving and engaging in tasks.

Conclusion

Whether you are an individual software developer or part of a large team, integrating AI code generators and assistants into your work can significantly boost efficiency, reduce the number of mistakes and errors, and free up more of your time for creative endeavours. If you are still not leveraging Artificial Intelligence capabilities, now is the best time to start. With this list of the best AI programming tools in 2023-2024, you can stay ahead in the rapidly changing landscape of software development.