AI-Assisted Programming

Chapter 5. Other AI-Assisted Programming Tools

While GitHub Copilot is the big shot when it comes to AI-assisted programming, plenty of other great tools are available. It’s common for developers to mix and match a few of them in their day-to-day coding. What’s nice is that most of these tools follow GitHub Copilot’s lead, so getting the hang of them isn’t too tough. You’ll use a comment to kick off a command and use handy shortcuts to get quick suggestions, and they also have a handy chat feature.

In this chapter, we’re going to dive into different AI programming tools. We’ll check out those from the big leagues like Amazon and also some neat finds from startups. Plus, we’re not leaving out open source options—like Meta’s Code Llama—because they’re definitely worth a look too.

Amazon’s CodeWhisperer

Amazon CodeWhisperer is like a Swiss Army knife extension for IDEs like VS Code, PyCharm, and AWS Lambda. It’s powered by an LLM trained on massive amounts of code and understands 15 programming languages. Amazon’s been careful about adding new languages, focusing on accuracy and security rather than speed to market. There are two versions of CodeWhisperer:

• The Individual version is free—just sign up with your AWS Builder ID or Amazon login. It gives code suggestions, tracks where open source code comes from, and does security checks.

• CodeWhisperer Professional costs $19 a month per user. It’s got everything that Individual has, plus some extra features useful to bigger companies. ...