Trying out the best AI Coding Assistants as of Nov 2024

First, let's look for a list. I'm trying to skip Github's Copilot because it's super popular, I want to see the alternatives first. So I found this Youtube video that seemed exhaustive.

From there, I was able to get these 2:

🤖 Code with Zed & Aider - Free Coding Assistants: Replace Cursor and VSCode with Zed, a fast, open-source editor powered by Claude 3.5, or Aider for a prompt-based coding experience. Both are free AI tools for developers looking for an efficient Copilot alternative.

🛠️ Cline & Supermaven - Unleash AI in VSCode: Enhance VSCode with Cline for seamless model integration or Supermaven as a fast, free copilot alternative. Boost productivity without paying for GitHub Copilot!

Upon checking out Reddit posts, I was also able to find Tabnine, Codeium and Cursor.

Edit: I was supposed to check out all mentioned options but somehow I stopped at the first one when I encountered Zed.

Zed IDE

Zed is a lightweight editor produced by the same developers as Atom.

Setting up the Free Claude 3.5 Sonnet

What's amazing is that it comes with a free Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, which I found to be the best model for coding assistants at the moment.

After downloading Zed, you just need to sign in here:

Open the assistant chat, and make sure to select Zed's Claude Sonnet 3.5.

There's no difference between Anthropic's and Zed's Claude 3.5 Sonnet so it's a very good deal.

I've been using this for 2 weeks everyday and so far I've not consumed a lot of credits:

3 Places to use the AI

1. On the file itself - no explanations, it just writes code and uses your selected code for context
2. On the side panel "AI Assistant" - this one is setup like a chat, and you can reference your files and other stuff. I use this when I'm figuring out something like architecture or playing out scenarios.
3. On the terminal - I rarely use AI on this

Possible contexts you can bring on on side panel AI Assistant - file, editor selection, terminal output, etc.

The only limitation I found was working with multiple files, so that's where Aider comes in.

Aider

Aider is a Python package that you install in your project folder. Give it all the files and it will work across all your files!

I used this for the first time when I wanted to refactor my file into several files. I had to buy some credits ($5 minimum) from Anthropic because I wanted to use Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

It's pretty straightforward to use. I run it on Zed's terminal.

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Just had a few hiccups with the setup, because it requires Python 3.9 - 3.12 and I had 3.13 installed plus, I'm not familiar with Python.

The only hiccup was that I was too lazy to type specific prompts for my refactoring task, so I ended up doing the refactoring myself. It did the initial structure though!