As we navigate through an era of unprecedented technological evolution, the landscape of software development is being profoundly transformed by Artificial Intelligence (AI). This transformative wave is not just reshaping how we approach problem-solving but also enhancing the efficiency and creativity of developers worldwide.
In the heart of this revolution lies a plethora of futuristic AI tools, designed to augment the capabilities of developers, streamline the development process, and usher in a new age of innovation. This blog post aims to shine a light on the top 10 AI tools for developers, offering insights into how these tools can be integrated into your development workflow to not only accelerate the development process but also elevate the quality of your output.
We hope that you embrace these emerging AI technologies to maximize your productivity and enable a more seamless software development workflow.
What are AI Coding Tools?
Simply put, they are software applications that make use of AI to assist developers in writing clean and efficient code much faster.
Best AI Tools for Developers
Below are the top AI tools for developers to supercharge their workflows.
1. Pieces for Developers
Pieces is one of the best AI tools for software development, designed to improve developer's efficiency and collaboration by allowing them to save, enrich, search, reference, and reuse their code snippets in a more organized and productivity-focused way. Furthermore, the Pieces desktop application and plugins in the browser, IDE and collaboration tools, have a centralized AI copilot that learns from your interactions across the toolchain and provides personalized assistance.
The copilot can be powered by on-device AI, allowing you to choose between cloud-based Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Gemini or GPT-4, or by Local Large Language Models (LLLMs) such as Llama 2 or Mistral AI. By referencing your saved materials and interactions from throughout your workflow with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), Pieces Copilot gives tailored suggestions and context-generated code.
In addition, the copilot supports multi-modal functionality. You can pass in a screenshot of your code as context to the copilot, and the copilot will extract the code using on-device small language models. Pieces also stands out as one of the only completely free AI tools for web development and other engineering tasks.
Pieces’ AI-powered search helps you to access your coding materials faster and more efficiently, whether you’re actively coding or just browsing the desktop app. With Pieces, the safety of your data is also guaranteed, as it employs an offline-first architecture for its AI features and essential plugins.
Pricing
Completely free for all users.
2. Tabnine
Tabnine is an AI-powered code completion tool that suggests the most suitable lines of code completion based on the context of what the developer writes. Also, this AI tool for developers assists in writing cleaner code much faster and more efficiently.
A blend of open-source data and proprietary code contributed by users serves as training data for Tabnine’s machine-learning algorithm, thereby giving it the ability to provide more diverse and accurate predictions. In addition, it can provide code completion in over 25 programming languages. See our comparison on GitHub Copilot vs ChatGPT vs Tabnine, or how you can use Tabnine and Pieces together.
Pricing
Free plan for individuals. Paid plans for teams start at $15/month.
3. Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a powerful meeting transcription tool that assists developers in transcribing their meetings and ensuring they don't miss out on details. Otter.ai can identify speakers in a meeting and attribute their words to them.
Otter.ai has a search tool to help developers search for keywords and phrases. In addition, developers can share their transcripts with teammates for seamless collaboration.
Pricing
It offers a free plan and other plans with varying features. The Pro plan costs $10 per user/month when billed annually.
4. OpenAI Codex
Codex is an AI tool developed by OpenAI to understand and write codes. It is also capable of translating natural language into text. It's a descendant of GPT-3 and its training data consists of natural language and billions of lines of codes from publicly available GitHub repositories. It serves as a link between natural language and code.
OpenAI Codex excels most in the Python programming language but is also capable of producing outputs in over a dozen languages like Javascript, Go, Pearl, and PHP. In addition, OpenAI Codex can handle more contextual information than the GPT-3 while performing any task due to its 14 KB memory size.
Codex performs well in understanding natural language queries, making it easy for developers to describe the code they need in simple English. It’s one of the best AI tools for developers with its ability to generate code in multiple programming languages, allowing for a large variety of developers to benefit.
Pricing
Free
5. Amazon CodeWhisperer
Amazon CodeWispherer is one of the best AI tools for developers working within the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and command line. Amazon CodeWhisperer generates code in real-time in the IDE based on your existing code and comments.
In addition, it has the unique functionality of scanning for vulnerabilities in your code, ensuring a more secure code output. It scans your code to identify hard-to-find security issues and provides suggestions using generative AI on how to remedy them.
CodeWhisperer also gives you the privilege of selecting from up to 15 programming languages and your favorite IDE, including both the popular VS Code and IntelliJ IDEA.
Pricing
Free for individuals. The paid plan for teams starts at $19 per month.
6. GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is one of the most used AI tools for developers. According to GitHub, their copilot has been activated by more than one million developers and adopted by over 20,000 organizations. This tool primarily helps developers auto-complete their code in the IDE, similar to Tabnine.
GitHub Copilot is compatible with many IDEs, including VS Code, Neovim, and JetBrains. In addition, it has helped to increase developer's productivity and accelerate the pace at which software is being developed. Learn more about the best free and paid GitHub Copilot alternatives.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $10 per month for individuals. Copilot for businesses is $19 per month. For enterprises, it is $39 per month.
7. Figstack
Figstack is one of the best AI tools for web development, enabling you to read and write code across multiple languages. It has the unique ability to explain code to you in your natural language. Furthermore, Figstack can help to translate code between different programming languages. For example, if you need to convert a code snippet written in Python to JavaScript, Figstack is your go-to tool.
In addition, Figstack helps to optimize the time complexity of your code. It does this by measuring the efficiency of your code in Big O notation, and provides suggestions on how you can improve it.
Figstack's Docstring Writer, helps you to craft detailed docstring for your functions to ensure they are always readable.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $10 per month for individuals.
8. Replit Ghostwriter
Replit is an online-based IDE in which developers can prototype, making use of resources available on the cloud. It’s bundled with an AI assistant called “Replit Ghostwriter” which is capable of providing real-time code explanations, edits and completions.
Replit AI works best with JavaScript and Python code, but it supports 16 languages in total. The current list includes Bash, R, Ruby, Rust, C, C#, C++, CSS, Go, Java, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, Perl, Python, and SQL.
Pricing
It has a free plan. The Hacker plan costs $7 per month, $74 with yearly pricing. Pro plan is $20 per month, $220 with yearly pricing.
9. Snyk
Synk is a cloud-based code analysis tool that helps to locate the vulnerabilities in security and open source license compliance issues in a developer's code. As one of the top AI tools for developers, Synk uses machine learning, along with dynamic and static analysis to analyze code.
Synk weaves security into your existing tools so you can find and fix security threats right from your IDEs, pipelines and container registries.
Pricing
Free for individual developers. The team plan is $57 per month per contributing developer, and $52 per month with annual billing. The enterprise plan is a custom quote.
10. Sourcery
Sourcery is another option in AI tools for developer productivity. It offers AI code generation tools with a central focus on assisting developers to write cleaner and more efficient code. It identifies errors in real-time. In addition, it also helps to remove duplicate code, making your project more focused and efficient.
Sourcery allows you to set instructions on how code fragments should be handled. It will ensure it follows those set rules thereby maintaining consistency and high quality throughout the project life cycle.
Pricing
It has a free plan for open-source projects. The project plan is $10 per month and the team plan is $30 per month.
Conclusion
Navigating the many AI tools available to developers can be daunting, yet the exploration can yield tools capable of revolutionizing the way we code, collaborate, and create. The ten best AI tools for developers highlighted in this article represent the pinnacle of current AI advancements in software development, each with its unique strengths and capabilities.
As we continue to experience the origin and future of copilots and other AI technology, these tools stand as the go-to for developers seeking to remain at the forefront of innovation. Embracing these AI tools is not just about keeping pace with technological progress; it's about redefining the boundaries of what is possible in software development.
Learn more about the evolution of AI software development and what developers need to stay ahead in their fields.
