Comparing AI Coding Tools

AI-powered coding assistants have gained significant traction in recent years, aiming to enhance developer productivity and accelerate the software development process. In this README, we'll take a closer look at some prominent AI coding tools like: GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q (ex-AWS CodeWhisperer), as well as Open Source alternatives and compare their key features and capabilities. Feel free to share your ideas by raising an issue or doing a Pull Request.

	Github Copilot	Amazon Q for Developers	Continue	FauxPilot	Privy
Commercial tool	x	x
Opensource			x	x	x
Service type	SaaS	SaaS	Extension	Hosted	Hosted
Features
Code completion	x	x	x	x	x
Chat	x	x	x		x
Assess/Document/Create code	x	x	x	x	x
Models	GPT4 for chat, GPT 3.5 for autocomplete	Undisclosed	Virtually all. OpenAI or local models consumed by API link	Salesforce CodeGen	Ollama
Availability	Global	Global	Local	Local	Local
Hosted regions	Github US	AWS US
IDE's supported	Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Vim, Neovim, the JetBrains suite, CLI	Visual Studio Code, JetBrains, AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio, CLI, Chatbot MS Teams and Slack	Visual Studio Code and JetBrains	Visual Studio Code	Visual Studio Code
Cost	Free: 30 day trial Paid: Individual 10 USD/month 100 USD/year           Enterprise 39 USD/month Business 19 USD/month	Free: Limited requests per month Paid: 19 USD/Dev/Month	Free + pay for model consumption	Free	Free
Demo	Demo	Amazon Q Developer - Your generative AI-powered assistant for work	Demo	FauxPilot	Demo
Community support	+++	+++	+++	+++	++
URL	GitHub Copilot - GitHub Docs	What is Amazon Q Developer	Continue	FauxPilot	Privy

Let's deep dive on the commercial tools!

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered coding assistant developed by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI. It is designed to help developers write code more efficiently by providing intelligent code suggestions and completions based on the context of the code being written. It is one of the most used tools on AI Coding domain.

Key Features

2. Language Support: Most current languages
3. Tight integration with GitHub and popular code editors (e.g., Visual Studio Code)
4. Requires a paid subscription for individual developers

Amazon Q for Developers (ex-CodeWhisperer)

An AI-powered coding assistant offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to help developers write code faster by providing intelligent code suggestions and completions based on the context of the code being written, similar to GitHub Copilot.

Key Features

1. Language Support: Most current languages
2. Tight integration with AWS services and IDEs like AWS Cloud9
3. Limited integration with non-AWS tools and IDEs

Common on AI Coding tools

1. Code Completion, Code Generation, Documentation Generation
2. Potential for generating insecure or incorrect code
3. Limited support for complex or domain-specific codebases
4. Trained on a vast corpus of open-source code, enabling accurate code suggestions
5. Supports a wide range of programming languages
6. Continuously improving through feedback and fine-tuning

Research studies on AI Coding & Developer Productivity

1. Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness
2. Unleashing developer productivity with generative AI