11 AI Tools Every Developer Needs to Know

Are you a developer looking for ways to improve your coding efficiency? 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the way we work, and developers are no exception. With the help of AI-based tools, developers can increase their productivity, write better code, and stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in the field. In this article, we will take a look at 11 AI tools for developers that can help them code smarter and faster. 

Tabnine

website: https://www.tabnine.com/

Tabnine is a powerful AI-based code completion tool that enhances the auto-completion feature of integrated development environments (IDEs). This tool supports over 20 languages and 15 editors, including popular IDEs such as VS Code, IntelliJ, Android Studio, and even Vim. Although it is not an end-to-end code generator, Tabnine provides developers with extended snippet proposals and targeted line code completions based on context and syntax, offering comprehensive line code completions and natural language to code. It is considered as the main competitor of Github Copilot, which is another AI-based code completion assistant. Tabnine offers a free version with limited features and a paid version at $12/month.

Polycoder

website: https://github.com/VHellendoorn/Code-LMs

Polycoder, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, is an open-source alternative to OpenAI's Codex. It is based on OpenAI's GPT-2 model and is trained on a 249 GB codebase in 12 programming languages. The authors of Polycoder claim that it can write C code with greater accuracy than any other model, including Codex. Unlike many code generators, Polycoder is open-source and allows users to customize the code generated according to their specific requirements. Additionally, Polycoder has the capability to generate code in multiple programming languages and can be integrated with other tools and platforms to assist developers in their coding tasks. The model also allows users to fine-tune the generated code, making it more human-like. This ability to fine-tune code is an important feature that sets it apart from other code generation models.

CodeT5

website: https://github.com/salesforce/CodeT5

CodeT5 is an open-source programming language model built by researchers at Salesforce. It is based on Google's T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer) framework, which is a powerful machine learning model that can generate human-like text. In order to train CodeT5, the team sourced over 8.35 million instances of code, including user comments, from publicly accessible GitHub repositories. A majority of these datasets were derived from the CodeSearchNet dataset, which includes popular programming languages such as Ruby, JavaScript, Go, Python, PHP, C, and C#, in addition to two C and C# datasets from BigQuery. CodeT5 can bring several capabilities to software programming, including:

• Text-to-code generation: CodeT5 can generate code based on natural language descriptions, making it easier for developers to express their ideas in code.
• Code autocompletion: CodeT5 can complete the whole function of code given the target function name, which can save developers a lot of time and effort.
• Code summarization: CodeT5 can generate a summary of a function in natural language description, which can be useful for developers who want to understand the functionality of a specific code snippet or for users who want to understand the functionality of a codebase quickly.

Additionally, it's worth mentioning that, CodeT5 is not only a powerful tool for developers but also for researchers and academics who can use this model to improve their research in natural language processing and machine learning.

Open AI Codex

website: https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex

The OpenAI Codex is a model that has been developed based on GPT-3 and is used to power GitHub Copilot, a tool from GitHub that allows developers to generate code within mainstream development environments such as VS Code, Neovim, JetBrains and even in the cloud with GitHub Codespaces. As per the claims, it is able to write code in at least a dozen languages including JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift and TypeScript, and even BASH. The Codex model is trained on a large number of lines of code that are available in the public domain, such as GitHub repositories. It is available for developers and platform companies through a private beta, for building tools and integration.

Cogram

website: https://www.cogram.com/

Cogram is a code generation tool developed by a Y-Combinator based startup in Berlin. It is designed for data scientists and Python programmers who use SQL queries and Jupyter Notebooks. The tool allows data scientists to write queries in plain English, which it then converts into complex SQL queries with joins and grouping. Cogram supports a variety of databases including SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and Amazon Redshift. Python and Julia developers can easily integrate Cogram with Jupyter Notebooks to automatically generate code. The tool can generate contextual code for specific tasks based on the comments provided by the user. In addition, data scientists can use Cogram to generate visualizations with popular Python modules such as Matplotlib, Plotly, or Seaborn with minimal effort. The tool also offers a user-friendly interface and a simple setup process making it easy for non-technical users to use it without any prior coding experience.

Visual Studio IntelliCode

website: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/intellicode/

Visual Studio IntelliCode is a product from Microsoft that utilizes AI to assist in coding. It is compatible with a variety of programming languages including Java, Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript in Visual Studio code, as well as C# and XAML in Visual Studio. The AI code completion tool was trained on the codes of 500,000 open-source projects on GitHub that have at least 100 stars, allowing it to provide contextually aware and relevant recommendations while coding.

PyCharm

website: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm

PyCharm is an integrated development environment (IDE) specifically designed for Python programmers. It allows for the development of AI-assisted code completion capabilities, enabling faster coding and complete coding tasks more easily. It also provides a range of features such as error checking, smooth project navigation and intelligent code completion.

Ponicode

website: https://ponicode.ai

Ponicode is a free-to-use tool that helps developers create software free of errors, saving time and making the development process easier. It supports Java, Python, JavaScript and TypeScript programming languages.

AIXcoder

website: https://aixcoder.com

AIXcoder is a tool that uses deep learning models trained on millions of lines of open-source code to provide contextually aware and relevant recommendations while coding. It also allows for offline usage for added data security and privacy. Additionally, it also compiles coding statistics to provide custom code inspection criteria.

DeepCode

website: https://www.deepcode.ai

DeepCode is a code review tool powered by AI that examines code and provides suggestions for improvement, including code completion, refactoring and linting capabilities. It is free for open-source projects, while a premium membership is available for private enterprises.

CodeWP

website: https://codewp.com/

CodeWP is a tool designed and optimized for those who construct WordPress websites. It offers support for JavaScript and PHP, as well as settings for plugins like WooCommerce and major page builders. It makes it easy to write queries, shortcodes and complete tasks on time.

AI and its impact on education

 As I sat in my room, staring at the blank wall, I suddenly recalled a question that had been on my mind when I was still studying: what does the future hold for educators and the field of education? And then, as if by some Frankensteinian twist of fate, the answer appeared before me in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots like ChatGPT.

But what exactly are these mysterious creatures?

AI, as I explained in my previous post, refers to the development of computer systems that perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Chatbots, on the other hand, are computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users, using natural language processing and machine learning techniques. Think of chatting with a real friend except that he isn't real (make sense?).

ChatGPT uses machine learning to generate human-like responses to prompts. The responses feel so real you wouldn't think it came from a computer system. It is quite impressive but also very freaky.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "How can a machine possibly replicate the depth and complexity of the human mind?" And to that, I say, "Have you met a teenager? They seem to have figured it out." But in all seriousness, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize the education sector.

AIs are capable of personalizing learning experiences for students. Using data from student interactions and assessments, AI systems can easily adapt to the needs and abilities of each student and provide more customized content and support. This can be particularly useful for students who may struggle with traditional classroom learning or for those who have specific interests and goals.

AIs can also automate grading and feedback processes simply by analyzing student work and providing detailed feedback in real-time, freeing up teachers to focus on other tasks. This can also help reduce the workload for teachers and allow them to spend more time on tasks that require human interaction and judgment, such as providing one-on-one support.

AI can also be used to analyze student data and help educators design and improve their curricula, ensuring that they are meeting the needs and interests of their students.

In addition, AIs can also be used to provide personalized professional development opportunities for teachers. In the process, help them stay up-to-date on the latest pedagogical practices and technologies.

The use of AI in education, however, raises some ethical concerns. There is a risk that AI systems could perpetuate biases and discrimination if they are not designed and implemented the "right way". For example, if an AI system is trained on data that is biased, it may produce also biased results. It is important for educators and policymakers to carefully consider the ethical implications of using AI in education and ensure that these systems are used in a way that is fair for all learners.

The evolution of AIs could also change how students are assessed. Tell me, how can teachers evaluate learning outcomes when they can't ascertain if the whole body of work was done by the students themselves? Assessments need to shift on the entire learning process and on the student's critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

A cursory look at some of the AIs in action, reveal that it does have significant potential to revolutionize not only the education sector but also various industries. Education and government leaders may see these as big threats to how they are presently doing things but real leaders see AIs as the wave of the future - a tool that will support rather than disrupt teaching and learning. We had calculators before and they told us that it will only trample students' ability to calculate numbers by hand and think critically. Not only are calculators still around, they have also become more advanced and sophisticated. That's also the same thing with AIs. They're tools, useful tools that can help everyone get rid of taxing, manual tasks and instead focus on the more important and relevant tasks, such as relationship building and interactions.

AIs have certainly altered our way of thinking and the way we do things but I'm not telling you to rely on these systems solely. They may be powerful but they're also quite in the infancy stage still, and mistakes are bound to happen. At least, students have an excuse for why their grades aren't perfect. "Sorry, Professor. My chatbot ate my homework."

ChatGPT incoming!

OpenAI's powerful language processing model called ChatGPT is taking Internet by storm. It has crossed over a million users in just 5 days. For comparison, it took Netflix approximately 41 months to get to a million subscribers, Facebook about 10 months, Spotify 5 months, and Instagram a little over 2 months. Getting to a million in less than a week is not only impressive but also mind-boggling.

So what is this big fuss about AI-powered ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a chatbot powered by GPT3 and the third iteration of OpenAI's Generative Pretrained Transformer language model. It was trained on a massive dataset of text, allowing it to generate human-like text on a variety of topics. It can perform a wide range of language processing tasks, such as translation, summarization, text generation, and maybe even more. With its over 100 billion parameters, its hard to narrow down what ChatGPT does. The model right now is only restricted to language. It can’t produce video, sound or images like OpenAI's other brainchild Dall-E 2.

So what makes it powerful?

ChatGPT acts like your 24-7 personal assistant who does all the hardwork for you, who never complains, who does not expect any payment (at least for now) or need any motivation to perform. It is almost too good to be true, except that it really does.

Are you a writer who perennially suffers from a writer's block and need some time and space where you can get your creative juices flowing? ChatGPT can write articles, blogs and even write a whole book. Writing essays, music, sitcom/movie scripts will also be a piece of cake. Want to write a poem for your wife on your 20th year wedding anniversary? Manok! These lines were generated by ChatGPT in less than a minute.

Roses are red, violets are blue

Twenty years of love, and our love grows stronger too

You are my rock, my partner, my friend

I am so grateful for you, my love will never end

Through the good times and the bad, we've stuck together

Through laughter and tears, we've weathered every weather

Through thick and thin, we've stood side by side

I am so blessed to have you as my bride

As we celebrate twenty years of marriage today

I want to let you know, in every single way

You are the love of my life, my one true soulmate

I love you more than words can ever say

Here's to many more years of love and happiness

You are my everything, my one true bliss

Happy anniversary, my darling wife

I love you now and forever, for the rest of my life.

I know it's pretty generic right? Nothing beats work that came straight from the heart but if you're cornered and pressed for time, this would be a handy tool, don't you agree? I only used a generic prompt so that is why the output was also kinda generic. You can maximize the power of ChatGPT if you enter more specific and detailed prompts (I will provide more examples on this in the next succeeding posts)

Now, you can generate hundreds of poems, make a collection and tell your wife that you wrote this non-stop for the past 365 days and she wouldn't even know (except if she's reading this right now). It can act as your math tutor and solve complex mathematical equations in no time at all. Don't know how to write emails? Let ChatGPT do it for you. Need a life coach, a chef, a standup comedian, a legal adviser, a film critic? Jolens!

Simulate a job interview? ChapGPT can do that. Act as English translator and grammar checker? Sisiw! Review a book? Easy as hell.

Engage the bot to a debate on a particular topic? Ho-hum. You can even tell the bot to act as a job recruiter and come up with strategies for sourcing qualified applicants.

Heck, it can even tell jokes: "Why did the politician cross the road? To campaign on the other side!"

Hilarious isn't it? Now, who says you can't tell a joke?

Don't have time or don't know how to code? ChatGPT can write code in any programming language and even debug your code.

This Excel VBA macro was generated in less than a minute:

Sub CountUniqueValues()

Dim rng As Range

Dim cell As Range

Dim dict As Object

Set dict = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

' Set the range to be counted

Set rng = Range("A1:A10")

' Loop through each cell in the range

For Each cell In rng

' If the value is not already in the dictionary, add it

If Not dict.Exists(cell.Value) Then

dict.Add cell.Value, 1

End If

Next cell

' Output the number of unique values in the range

MsgBox "There are " & dict.Count & " unique values in the range."

End Sub

Programmers no longer have excuse not to complete work on time. With this technology, more work can be accomplished and that can be a good thing, right?

ChatGPT can also act as your doctor and provide you assistance in diagnosing the cause for a particular symptom or symptoms. Of course, this is merely for fun. You should always go to your doctor for any of your medical-related concerns. But compared to using Google where all symptoms appear to directly lead to a cancer diagnosis, ChatGPT's diagnostic assistance is more subtle and believable. Accurate? That remains to be seen. But for purposes of entertainment, thumbs up!

ChatGPT is so powerfully useful in a lot of ways. As a large language model, it has been trained on a vast amount of text, which means it has a lot of knowledge about a wide range of topics (think about having Ernie Baron or Kuya Kim as your chat mate). This can be particularly helpful if you are trying to find information on a particular subject, or if you need help with a specific task. In short, an AI-powered Marites.

For all its bells and whistles ChatGPT can't do things that involve images and videos. It can only process textual content. It cannot also act or pretend as your friend as it is incapable of forming any emotional connections. You cannot also request the bot to dance the See Tinh or Ting Ting Tang Tang dance craze. It is not built for that but I like what you are thinking.

ChatGPT is also brutally honest. When I asked if I'm handsome, the bot replied that he is "a computer program and do not have the ability to see or judge physical appearances. I am not able to determine whether or not someone is handsome. My primary function is to provide information and assist with tasks, not to provide personal opinions or evaluations. Is there something else I may be able to help you with?" which is really just a sleek way of telling you that you're better off not asking this type of questions to avoid embarrassing yourself. Of course, I'm only kidding. Although ChatGPT is highly advanced, it also has limitations. The quality of its responses is dependent on the quality of its inputs. Pretty sure OpenAI, the company responsible for creating this amazing chatbot, is fixated on getting rid of the cobwebs marring ChatGPT's inaccuracies and limitations. They promised to release a more advanced model next year and I can't wait to see what they have in store.

In a nutshell, ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for anyone who needs help with writing, editing, or generating textual content. Whether you are a student, a writer, or just someone who wants to improve their skills, ChatGPT can be your go-to tool to get the answer that you need. Of course, word of advice: don't trust technology too much, you are still the best AI there is.

Will AI replace Humans?

As technology continues to evolve at an astonishingly fast clip, there is some growing concerns about the potential of AI or artificial intelligence to completely replace humans in the workforce. While some believe that AIs will eventually be able to perform all tasks currently done by humans, others argue that there are certain areas where AI will never be able to fully replace humans.

20 years ago, we were doing encoding work for images that were manually scanned, then the OCR technology came in and instead of doing the pretty laborious task of manually keying-in textual data, we let technology do the work. It literally saved hundreds of hours of work, improved turnaround times and quality of life, and in the process help saved people's fingers. The concerns people have with the emerging technology back then was that it would replace workers who were all doing the encoding task. Yes, the encoding task disappeared but new tasks, roles and opportunities surfaced, and processes became much more efficient. This did not lead to the massive displacement of workers. The workforce was, in fact, even augmented.

That's the same with AI and future technologies. Roles will eventually change but not at the expense of human workers. We have AIs now that act like your own personal assistant. AIs can write an article for you, blog, write music, sitcom/movie scripts, even compose a poem or tell a joke (I'm not joking). Some can even write a whole novel utilizing various AIs in combination with another. AIs can also write code in any language, act as your math tutor and help solve multiple mathematical equations, and create a marketing plan. Some AIs can even help you pass the Bar Exams! (there will come a time when AIs will probably be implanted directly to our brains that will allow us to process information better than Einstein, Galileo, Rene Descartes, Johann Goethe, Isaac Newton and all the smartest people combined)

Yes, these AIs are quite powerful but they will never be able to replace the work of humans. Tasks such as problem-solving, decision-making, and creative thinking will be difficult for AI systems to perform. This kind of tasks require the special ability to understand and interpret complex situations, which is something that AI systems are not currently capable of (they will probably be able to do this later on but I hope they do not). AIs are also pretty emotionless, which means if you're looking for a virtual companion whom you expect to fully understand you, play possum or gossip behind your back, gobble all your pulutan (sorry I do not know how to translate this) while ordering stacks of beer that they couldn't pay, then AIs cannot help you with that.

Another reason why AI will never be able to fully replace humans is that AI systems are limited by the data they are trained on. This means that they may not be able to adapt to new situations as easily as humans can. In many cases, AI systems need to be retrained in order to perform well in new environments, which can be time-consuming and costly. For that you need new inputs from humans for this to work.

In a nutshell, while AI has the potential to drastically improve the quality of our lives and work, it is unlikely that it will ever be able to fully replace us. While AI may be able to perform certain tasks more efficiently than humans, there are many areas where human intuition and creativity are still essential. As such, it is important that we continue to invest in AI technology, educate and learn new skills that will help prepare us for the future and then get a good night sleep.

A whole new world of technology

If you fell into a deep coma 30 years ago and manage to wake up only now, would you be startled, jolted, amazed, disturbed, excited, electrified with an entirely new world around you?

Back then, the telephone, telegram and snail mails (well, you may also include the tin cans) were the only means to communicate to friends and relatives from the other parts of the globe.

Do you remember crunching your thoughts so they could fit in a single sentence (without comma or period) when using telegrams? How about the memory of placing long distance or overseas calls to loved ones using IDD cards? Still recall writing a mail and inserting paper money (enough to buy a letter stamp) so the recipient would not have any excuse not to write you back?

Not only were these methods slow and inconvenient but they were also damn very expensive.

If I can talk to my teenager self and tell him that he can directly communicate with his friend or relative anytime and anywhere he wants at the cost of nothing (well not entirely nothing because you still have to pay for the mobile data or internet connection), he probably won't believe me.

The invention of the Internet has changed everything - the way we work, the way we do things, the way we communicate with people.

For the better or worse? Well, it entirely depends on your perspective.

Technology has always been constantly developed to help solve worldwide problems and achieve specific goals. It is intended to somehow make our lives much easier. Better? Probably.

The Internet has made it possible for us to easily access a vast amount of information and connect with others across the globe and this has opened up new opportunities for education, communication, and commerce. Now, even without a college education, you can survive in this new generation dominated by content creators, crypto traders, digital advertisers and marketers, and software developers. How many Tiktokers and YouTubers are making more money than Lawyers and Doctors right now? I'm not advocating that kids skip school ok? I'm merely stating facts.

Interested in learning new skills? There's YouTube, Coursera, Udemy, Linkedin, Udacity, Edx, Skillshare, Alison, Khan Academy, to name a few. You can even enrol at Stanford, and several Ivy schools like Harvard and Yale for free. Some schools even offer a free masters degree education. Need research? Just go to your favorite search engine (or even better, use ChatGPT-3 which I will explain in another post). Need remote jobs? There's Upwork, Hired, Flex Jobs, Jobspresso, Remote OK, Just Remote, JS Remotely, Daily Remote, Remote Leaf, Remote Work, Remote Leads, AngelList Talent, Working Nomads, Product Hunt Jobs, and We Work Remotely to name a few.

New AI-powered tools like deepfake, writing assistants, text to image, text to audio, fraud detection, chatbots, process automations represent another revolution that make the future much more exciting but also at the same time downright scary.

When everything's at your fingertips, expectations are also expectedly higher. With all the tools and resources readily available, you are expected to be 2x, 3x or even 100x much more productive. Everything is already spoon-fed to you unlike before when you have to toil a lot of hours in the school or public library (well it really is just an excuse to spend time looking at your crush), spend a lot of money photocopying pages you'd never use and putting up with school nerds who only care about lifting their scholastic bravado. You are expected to get things done (and probably more). Anything below that is a failure. A massive failure. I just wonder if today's generation has the mental wherewithal or fortitude to accept such outcome.

During our time, when we want to accomplish something, we had to put a lot of sweat, blood and tears into it. From elementary to high school, to college, to graduate school, we were wired to do the most difficult things and did things the hard way. Nothing came easy. So when things don't go our way, we never break, we never crumble.