AI-Based Tools for Programmers

Introduction

Programming involves the process of designing, creating, testing, deploying, and maintaining applications, systems, and websites using various languages, technologies, and methodologies. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP), advanced tools have emerged to assist programmers in various aspects of their work. These tools utilize AI and NLP capabilities to offer automated code generation, code completion, and code summarization, among other functionalities. This article explores five such AI-based tools that can benefit programmers in their daily tasks.

OpenAI Codex

OpenAI Codex is a powerful model based on GPT-3, which powers GitHub Copilot, a tool designed to generate code within mainstream development environments. It supports numerous languages, including JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift, TypeScript, and even BASH. The model is trained on billions of lines of code from public sources, such as GitHub repositories, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in code generation.

Tabnine

Tabnine is an AI-based code completion tool developed in Rust by Jacob Jackson when he was a student at the University of Waterloo. It offers support for over 20 languages and 15 editors, allowing for seamless integration with popular IDEs like VS Code, IntelliJ, Android Studio, and Vim. Tabnine is priced at $432 per year for a team of 3 developers and can significantly enhance the auto-completion features of traditional IDEs.

CodeT5

CodeT5 is an open source programming language model built by researchers at SalesForce. Based on Google’s T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer) framework, CodeT5 can handle text-to-code generation, code autocompletion, and code summarization tasks. It is trained on a vast dataset of code gleaned from publicly accessible GitHub repositories and can address a variety of programming needs.

Polycoder

Polycoder is another open source code generation model developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Utilizing OpenAI’s GPT-2, Polycoder focuses on improving code generation performance for languages like C. While most code generators are proprietary, Polycoder stands out as a freely available resource for developers seeking assistance in code creation.

Cogram

Cogram is a code generation tool targeted towards data scientists and Python programmers. It allows users to write SQL queries in English and translates them into complex SQL queries with joins and grouping operations. Cogram supports SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon Redshift, Python, Julia, and integrates with Jupyter Notebooks for seamless code generation based on comments and task requirements.

In conclusion, these AI-based tools can greatly assist programmers in their work by automating various aspects of software development and providing valuable insights for code generation, completion, and summarization. As the field continues to evolve, we can expect further advancements that will continue to streamline programming processes and enhance productivity.