AI-Assisted Coding Beyond Copilot

I was so excited when Github announced Copilot way back in October 2021. I immediately subscribed for beta access and got access a few months later.

It felt like having a superpower.

So much so that after the free beta access ended, I kept paying the monthly subscription for another 12 months. Then other similar solutions started popping up while the quality of Copilot got worse and worse.

So naturally, I thought it was time to try the alternatives

There are many online alternatives for a monthly subscription fee. Different services offer different models. I strongly recommend trying out a couple of services and models before settling to pay for one.

Some tools, like Ollama, let you run models locally that you can connect to your IDE of choice (provided it has a plugin) and pay absolutely nothing for an AI pair programmer.

Non-IDE solutions

The other thing you can do is to use ChatGPT or similar chat-based software to help you with problems.

The power of this hugely depends on two things: whether it has access to the Internet and the available models. See some recommendations in the curated section below.

For this, you have to keep up with the AI news. You can do that effortlessly by subscribing to the Rundown newsletter:

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Curated

👉 Tools - Treasure Trove Finds

Cody - AI pair programmer. Chat, autocompletion, test generation, code explainer, inline suggestions, and more. With Claude 3!

Perplexity - The chat-based LLM & search-engine combo that actually works. Understands context and can search the internet, thus coming up with answers using the latest available guides and tool versions.

Ollama - Run powerful models locally on your machine. If you want to fine-tune, concerned about privacy, or if you want to heat up your room.

GitHub Copilot - The OG in-IDE AI pair programming solution.

👉 Binge-worthy

Learn how to make AI work for you.

AI won’t take your job, but a person using AI might. That’s why 500,000+ professionals read The Rundown – the free newsletter that keeps you updated on the latest AI news and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Subscribe with one click.

I Tried Every AI Coding Assistant ▷ —A 25-minute video comparing the above choices and some others.

AI Inference now available in Supabase Edge Functions - If you want to use AI in your product, Supabase just released some massive updates to make your life easier and save some $$$.

Until next time,
David