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5 Best AI Coding Assistants for Programmers in 2024

Author: Innotech Vietnam
Date: 28/06/2024

Are you looking for the best AI coding assistants? Here are our top 5 with excellent autocomplete features. We ranked #1 as the most advanced AI code assistant that we have ever seen!

 

Coding is often like a labyrinth, with each line of code opening up into a mess of new challenges and complexities. Think of AI as your coding Minotaur: it guides you through faster.

 

Compared to when I first looked at the landscape, there have been considerable developments in the best AI assistants for coding. Today, you’ll find mature products that improve code writing, enhance communication, and kill bugs quickly and efficiently with debugging tools. That’s a big step up from those early AI tools to help you code, which just provided fundamental draft assistance.

 

After weeks of in-depth research and hands-on testing, experts at Innotech wrangled up the top 5 list of the best AI code assistants for you to consider – alongside emerging apps worth watching. 

 

Further, if you want to create your AI-boosted coding workflows, we have enclosed an overview of how this tech can raise your coding ability to the next level.

 

What is an AI Coding Assistant?

 

The AI coding assistant is one of the most powerful tools in the review team that applies artificial intelligence to boost your coding efficiency and accuracy. You could think of it as a brilliant code reviewer, an auto-complete system, and an integrated chat tool.

 

Powered by the latest large language models, the new AI code assistant provides various essential features.

  • Code suggestions: In writing code, coding AI assistants can proactively offer code snippets and functions that match the context of your project.
  • Bug fixing: It will detect bugs and errors in your code before running the program. The assistant inspects your code and helps you with the best suggestions to enhance it.
  • Multi-language support: Any language code can be generated and even run, hence not requiring the pain of learning a new language.
  • Refactoring: AI assistant for coding can clean up your code and make it more readable. The tool generates docstrings, adds comments to your code, formats it, creates unit tests, etc.
  • Natural language queries: It facilitates chatting with the AI assistant due to natural language itself per se, exactly one would talk to a human being. This feature assists in generating complex code and understanding code functionality.
  • Security: The assistant scans and suggests fixing your code for security vulnerabilities.
  • Error Fixing: In cases of faults while running your code, the best AI coding assistants diagnose and help resolve them on the go.

 

The best coding AI assistant is instrumental to developers in quickly writing good, accurate code. They are designed to enhance only the productivity and efficiency of the developer without replacing their role in developing products.

 

No more waiting. Here are our 5 top picks for AI coding assistants! 

 

A quick comparison of 5 best AI assistants for coding

5 best AI assistants for coding

5 best AI assistants for coding

 

IDE Integrations

IDE Integrations

 

5 Best AI coding assistants you must try (Free and paid)

 

#1. Claude 3.5 Sonnet – Best AI coding assistant for swift, smart coding

 

Claude 3.5 Sonnet relocates the needle on AI due to graduate school-level reasoning, undergraduate depth of knowledge, and industry-leading coding proficiency. 

 

Nuance, a sense of humor, and following complicated instructions are second nature to this technology that creates high-caliber material at a natural tone. 

 

With twice the speed of Claude 3 Opus and very pocket-friendly with its pricing, the Claude 3.5 Sonnet is perfect for multi-step workflows or even those heavy on complexity, such as context-aware customer support. 

 

best AI assistants for coding

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is one of the Best AI Assistants for Coding.

 

In the agentic coding evaluation, it solved 64% of problems, far outperforming prior models. It can write independently, edit, and execute code with the most advanced rationale and debugging capabilities with proper instruction

 

This ability to change code from one type to another makes this AI coding assistant very useful for updating and moving old computer programs to new systems. You might know why now it’s such a good all-around tool that can be used for many different AI jobs.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet for vision

 

Key features

 

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is impressive, with many features that undoubtedly make this model outstanding compared to previous models and many competitors. Listed here are some of its key attributes:

 

  • Greater understanding and context awareness: This model understands complex questions well and gives contextually correct results.
  • Improved vision capabilities: Advanced image processing in Claude 3.5 Sonnet can better interpret and respond to visual inputs. 
  • Humor and creativeness: It has been trained to reply with humor and creativity, enhancing the interactivity with the model and making such interactions much more human-like. Anthropic believes a light-hearted AI approach is the way forward.
  • Performance: Claude 3.5 Sonnet is far ahead in benchmarking performance and is a predictable choice for various applications.

 

Pricing

  • Basic plan: Free
  • Pro plan: $20/user/month
  • Team plan: $25/user/month (Minimum five members)

 

#2. Github Copilot – Best code assistant AI for seamless code collaboration

 

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool developed with GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft. Copilot is highly trained on a large corpus of open-source code from GitHub. This enables it to directly make context-aware AI coding assistance within top development environments such as Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, and Neovim.

 

Research has demonstrated that Copilot increases developers’ productivity and satisfaction. All users reported coding up to 55% faster with 75% more job satisfaction, all while retaining code quality. 

 

Github Copilot

Github Copilot –  one of the best AI coding assistants for seamless code collaboration.

 

Although Copilot supports most languages in open-source code, the suggestions it provides are exceptionally good for prevalent languages like JavaScript, which mirrors what its training data consists of. 

 

This integration goes beyond IDEs to be available via the GitHub CLI and will soon be included directly in the web and mobile GitHub experiences. 

 

Key features

GitHub Copilot runs through a machine learning model, OpenAI Codex, which understands exactly what one is trying to do and provides real-time coding suggestions. Here’s a high-level rundown of how this best coding assistant AI works:

 

  • Context understanding: GitHub Copilot takes into account your code, comments, and even file names to understand what exactly you’re working on. It will adapt to different programming languages to match your intentions in coding.
  • Code generation: Copilot uses AI to guess what code you want to write next. It offers helpful suggestions as you work. These can be small, like finishing a line of code, or bigger, like writing whole functions or classes.
  • IDE integration: GitHub Copilot has been integrated into tools such as Visual Studio Code. This integration provides real-time code suggestions for editing or applying.
  • Public code learning: On a vast range of public code, Copilot trains not only on correct code but also on popular patterns and solutions recognized by the global developer community. 

 

Though it doesn’t learn from your code in real-time, Copilot was designed to personalize its suggestions based on context and how you interact with it.

 

Pricing

  • Basic plan: Free
  • Team plan: $4/user/month
  • Enterprise plan: $21/user/month

 

#3. Codium AI – Best AI code assistant for enhanced productivity

 

CodiumAI is changing how developers generate, change, and edit code using machine learning models trained on huge codebases. Here is how it disrupts software development:

 

  • CodiumAI is agile and accurate in predicting code snippets and refactoring existing code, and it can generate entire applications from scratch.
  • Advanced features such as code autocompletion, advanced refactoring, and automated source code testing make CodiumAI the most effective at improving coding speed and reducing errors.
  • Broadcasted with features of code autocomplete, intelligent refactoring, and automated testing, CodiumAI is on its way to changing how developers pen and build software.

 

Before leveraging this best code assistant AI IDE extension:

Codium AI

Codium AI is one of the best AI coding assistants for enhanced productivity.

 

The figure below defines the CodiumAI interface, showing how it recommends code pieces according to the user’s input. 

 

This GIF illustrates a process and the results of using the CodiumAI VSCode extension to explain Python code for downloading YouTube videos.

 

CodiumAI VSCode

Results of using the CodiumAI VSCode extension to explain Python code.

 

Key features

  • AI-powered code completion: It provides intelligent code suggestions and completion upon typing.
  • Code explanation: Provides clear explanations of complex code snippets, enhancing understanding.
  • Automatic test generation:  The generation of unit tests to test your code to increase code quality and reliability.
  • Code refactoring: Proposes and provides an improvement and restructuring of the code.
  • Natural language to code: Translates natural language descriptions into functional code snippets. 
  • Context-awareness suggestions: It understands what your project is about to offer relevant assistance.
  • Generate documentation: Facilitates creation and maintenance of code documentation.
  • Customizable: Triggers the ability to fine-tune the suggestions per the user’s coding style and preference.

 

Pricing

  • Developer plan: Free
  • Teams plan: $19/user/month
  • Enterprise plan: Custom pack. You should contact their team for more information.

 

#4. Codeium – Lightning-fast AI code completion for 70+ languages

 

Codeium is one of the leading in the fast-developing AI coding assistant market. Hundreds of developers are utilizing its AI tool kit across over 40 IDEs and supporting over 70 languages. 

 

From Visual Studio Code to the JetBrains suite, Eclipse, and Jupyter Notebooks, this company refers to the toolkit as “the modern coding superpower.” Of course, it doesn’t hurt that one throws in a recent $65 million Series B funding round and five-star reviews in extension marketplaces.

 

Codeium

Codeium is one of the best AI coding assistants for fast development. 

 

What truly sets Codeium apart is its vast library of coding tutorials and guides. From a beginner to an experienced programmer, Codeium provides step-by-step tutorials covering many programming languages and frameworks. These are highly user-friendly resources for quickly grasping the problematic concepts in coding.

 

Key features

 

  • AI-Powered Autocomplete: It’s a more advanced AI-based feature that gives the best possible acceleration to your coding and improves the overall coding experience. 
  • AI Chat: Assist in a full spectrum of tasks, from generating and refactoring code to fixing bugs, adding documentation, and many more to increase your coding efficiency.
  • Intelligent Search: This is for smartly searching files and code relevant to your intentions. No complex regexes are needed. According to their Features, Codeium supports extensions and platform compatibility for Chrome, Safari, Edge, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and various IDEs like Visual Studio Code, JetBrains, Neovim, Vim, and Jupyter Notebook.
  • Data Security: Best coding AI assistant Codeium follows SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. None of your user data is ever used for training purposes, and all data transmissions are encrypted, so it’s even more secure on your data.

 

Pricing

  • Individual plan: Free
  • Teams plan: $15/user/month
  • Enterprise plan: Custom pack. Unlimited seats. You should contact their team for more information.

 

#5. Supermaven – Context-rich AI assistant for enterprise-scale coding

An important role is that of the context window — the model exposes the amount of code it looks at before making suggestions. Copilot just increased its window to 8,192 tokens to enhance completions.

 

The team at Supermaven has designed a new neural network architecture. This will be more efficient at processing extended contexts than the vanilla Transformer. In their latest model, a 300,000-token context window comes at the exact cost and latency as a 4,000-token Transformer window.

 

That means, for users, Superman can familiarize itself with your entire codebase. Your repository’s processor just takes between 10-20 seconds

 

This eliminates one of the major problems — already pointed out — with Copilot: it has difficulty working with vast and unique code bases. Copilot does wonders when it makes use of popular, well-known APIs. However, custom code is where it usually falls short.

 

Supermaven

Supermaven is the first code completion tool with a 300,000-token context window.

 

Here’s a really simple example of the difference:

 

The company ran Supermaven and Copilot using the same code. Both were asked to create a `doubleIndentation` function using an `Indentation` type. The `Indentation` struct was not declared in the current file. 

 

  • Copilot produced non-compiling code since there was minimal context from which to draw.
  • Supermaven, with access to the entire 50,000 token repository, produced the correct code. This demonstrates that it can significantly improve the accuracy of code completion based on a larger context window. 

 

Video: https://cdn.supermaven.com/video/longdef.mp4

(The team at Supermaven has designed a new neural network architecture)

Key features

  • 300,000-Token Context Window: Supermaven has a large context window that allows it to consider a significant portion of your code when making suggestions. These factors make it highly effective for working with large codebases
  • Lightning-speed: It is designed for fast performance, with custom infrastructure to keep it responsive, even with the long prompts that come with large codebases
  • Trained on Edit Sequences:  Unlike other tools that only analyze files, Supermaven is trained on edit sequences. This approach helps Supermaven quickly understand what the developer wants, making it especially good for tasks like refactoring code.
  • Free Tier Available: Supermaven offers a free tier. It is accessible for developers who want to try out its features without initial investment.

 

Pricing

  • Basic plan: Free
  • Pro plan: $10/user/month
  • Team plan: $10/user/month

 

Our final verdict – What is the best AI code assistant?

 

Selecting the best AI coding assistants will increase your potential and productivity as a developer. 

 

  • Be it at the light-speed pace of Codeium or in a rich context with Supermaven, each tool in the list has some peculiarity that could interest different coding needs.
  • Claude 3.5 Sonnet stands out with advanced reasoners and debuggers, making it the right choice for the most complex workflows. 
  • GitHub Copilot excels in perfectly smooth code collaboration, and Codium AI makes it much easier by being incredibly intelligent in code suggestions and automated testing cases. 

 

The first things that impressed us about Codeium were the broad language support and the decent tutorials. At the same time, the breakthrough of Supermaven is a 300,000-token context window that will change forever how people work with large codebases.

 

These best AI coding assistants can change your coding experience in multiple ways, like creating, refactoring, and debugging code. The more advanced AI technology gets, the more dominant these tools will become a must for each developer.


Besides, if you are looking for Offshore development services or customized mobile app solutions, consider Innotech Vietnam to be a better option for collaboration. As one of the most outsourcing software development companies in Vietnam, we proudly boast our knowledge and commitment to excellence.

 

With over 12 years of industry experience, Innotech has performed 200+ software transformations for hundreds of companies needing modernization. See how Innotech Vietnam can back up your projects and drive your business to the next level. Thank you for reading!

 

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