Developer productivity tools and extensions are increasing every year. The latest hype is for the tools that are powered by Artificial Intelligence. Such tools are constantly increasing in terms of quality and quantity.
If used properly, they can improve your productivity multiple times and help you do stuff in minutes that would have taken you hours to do without proper setup of tools and extensions.
RELATED: Guide to Setup VS Code For Maximum Productivity
Visual Studio Code extensions
Today, I am going to bring you 8 Great VS Code extensions powered by AI that you should take a look at if you want to explore AI extensions and become 10x more productive in 2023. So without further ado, let's get started!
1. GitHub Copilot
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If you are a programmer, there’s no chance you have not heard about GitHub Copilot. It’s an AI pair programmer that skyrockets the productivity of a developer. It gives you smart auto-complete suggestions when coding. Alternatively, you can also write natural comments to define what kind of code you want GitHub Copilot to generate.
GitHub Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex which is trained on billions of lines of open-source code to generate highly accurate results. It’s a paid tool but you can use the trial version for 60 days to feel its power and then finally decide whether you want to get ahead with it or not.
GitHub Copilot has been installed more than 3.5 million times on VS Code as of February 2023.
2. Tabnine
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Tabnine is a VS Code extension similar to GitHub Pilot with few differences. It provides smart auto-complete code suggestions powered by AI to boost developer productivity.
Tabnine helps you generate code from comments, complete whole lines and functions, and even real-time midline code completion as you write your code. It also supports offline mode and private models trained on your own repositories.
Tabnine offers a basic free version and pro versions with advanced features. It has been installed more than 4.9 million times in VS Code and has a rating of 4.5
3. Bito AI
Bito is an AI assistant tool with a diverse use case. You can use it to generate code, ask for syntax, generate test cases, code explanations, comment generation, improve code performance, check security, and learn technical concepts.
Bito can be installed in VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and Chrome. It’s available as a chatbot that you can use to interact and ask questions. You can also use it to automate the removal of logging statements and add error and exception handling to your code.
Bito AI has been installed by more than 3,500 times in VS Code as of February 2023.
4. Mintlify Doc Writer
Mintlify Doc Writer is an awesome tool that uses AI to document your code. It generates AI documentation for your code in the form of comments that conforms to standard formats like JSDoc, reST, NumPy, etc.
Mintlify supports more than 10 programming languages so far including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Ruby, C++, Dart, Go, etc. Additionally, Mintlify allows you to write documentation in 9 different languages: English, Chinese, Dutch, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.
To document your code with Mintlify, all you have to do is, place your cursor or highlight the part that you want to document and press [Ctrl +] .. Now, let Mintlify do the rest of the work.
It is available on VS Code and IntelliJ and has garnered more than 100,000 installs on VS Code.
5. Code GPT
Code GPT is GPT inside VS Code. It’s a multifaceted VS Code extension that delivers a bunch of AI features powered by Open AI API. Code GPT can generate code, answer your questions, show the best answer from Stack Overflow, explain your code, refactor and document your code, find problems in your code, and write unit tests for it, all inside the VS Code window.
Code GPT extension is free to use but you have to pay to Open AI because Code GPT uses Open AI API which is paid. Code GPT has been installed more than 100,000 times as of February 2023.
6. Kodezi AI
Kodezi is another AI companion that you can benefit a lot from. It has a bunch of features powered by AI to improve your overall productivity.
It uses large language models trained on various open-source projects to debug and optimize your code, convert code from one programming language to another, generate documentation and code by giving instructions, and answer all your questions with its chatbot: KodeziChat.
Kodezi AI has a free limited trial version and a pro version with more limits and features. It has been installed more than 9,600 times in VS Code.
7. Readable - AI Generated Comments
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Readable is an AI comment generator VS Code extension that helps you comment your code without writing a single comment yourself. It supports 10 different programming languages that include JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX/TSX, Python, and others.
Readable is both free and paid but the free version only shows stale comments. You have to pay $19.99 per year to use the AI comment generation feature. It has been installed more than 6,800 times on VS Code as of February 2023.
8. Denigma AI
Denigma is an awesome AI tool that helps you understand code by explaining it in general conversational English. You can use it to generate an explanation of a certain block of code or of a whole file in just 2 clicks.
Denigma claims fast results(under 2 seconds) and 75% to 95% accuracy in explanation depending upon the code. It has been installed more than 22,800 times in VS Code as of February 2023.
Wrapping Up
The age of AI has just begun and in the future, there will be more and more developer tools and extensions that are powered by Artificial Intelligence to enhance developer productivity.
As for today, this is the end of the article. I hope you got to know some new VS Code AI extensions to play with when you are coding next time. Let me know if you are aware of any other VS Code AI extension that could be a great addition to the above list.
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