Best AI-Powered Development Tools: Ultimate Guide in 2023

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Introduction

The future of software development is here. Powered by artificial Intelligence(AI). Developers are unlocking new levels of efficiency and innovation. Even non-developers have been able to build software and publish it in no time. The introduction of chatGPT opened the door for a lot of innovation in this space.

The tools in this article cover the entire development lifecycle and can do remarkable things. I've attached a few videos in each section to demonstrate the tools in action. I'll summarize the most popular tools as of Spring 2023.

This article is not sponsored, it is my selection and opinions on these tools. Bookmark this guide as your reference for AI-Driven tools that will help you and your team move faster and stay ahead of the competition.

You may also want to check out this Machine Learning Primer to gain insights into the algorithms behind these tools. I'll be writing another post soon on how to get a company up and running end to end with the use of AI tools only, so click the subscribe button to get a notification once that's out

Recently an entrepreneur in Ukraine managed to build a Chrome extension plugin in 10 hours, which he later sold for $1000. The plugin allowed the user to type a command in any textbox on any website followed by the prompt and it would invoke the ai assistant to complete the task see the clip attached below

With that in mind, we will cover the following areas:

  • Design and prototyping (Mid-journey, Dall.E 2, Sketch2Code, Uizard)
  • Development and Code completion (chatGPT4, copilot, Tabnine)
  • Code testing (Snyk, ApplitCode, DevMate)
  • Debugging and error prediction (chatGPT4, BugSpot, CodeGuru)
  • Project management (Motion, ClickUp, Notion)

Design and Prototyping

Art Generation

  • Mid-journey(https://www.midjourney.com) Powerful Generative Art tool, that can create remarkable art from text description to use for your website or app. The quality of the picture depends on your prompt. you could use something like chatGPT to describe a similar picture to what you want and give that prompt to generate the image
  • Dall.E 2(https://openai.com/product/dall-e-2) (Free, Paid) Similar to Mid-journey can create art from prompts and can be done via their website it will create 4 variations for each prompt. They give you free credits to start with and they reset over a period of time. You can buy more credit to use

Wireframes from scribble

  • Sketch2Code (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/ai-show/sketch2code): Developed by Microsoft, Sketch2Code is an AI-powered tool that converts hand-drawn wireframes into functional HTML code. This allows developers to quickly transform their design ideas into working prototypes, reducing time spent on manual coding.
  • Uizard (https://uizard.io): Uizard is an AI-driven design tool that transforms wireframes and mockups into interactive prototypes and front-end code.

Development and Code Completion

  • Github copilot (https://github.com/features/copilot) (Paid):Available as an extension for IntelliJ and VS code and other IDEs and supports various languages. (Whole line code completions, Full-function code completions, Natural language to code, Explain code, and more) It can help developers work much faster with languages they are not used to and write code faster
  • ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/): You can ask it to create code for you in any language as well as develop that code further based on your needs and you can even use it to debug issues with your code or system its truly remarkable what I can do you can watch a full developer video here, I've also attached a  few short examples.

GPT-4 creates a Game

  • Tabnine (https://www.tabnine.com/) (Paid): Built similarly to chatGPT using a Large Transformer Language Model. Available on most popular IDEs including IntelliJ and VS Code and across most language (Whole line code completions, Full-function code completions, Natural language to code)

Code Testing

  • Snyk (https://snyk.io): The AI-powered code review tool that analyzes your codebase to identify potential security vulnerabilities, bugs, and performance issues, leveraging machine learning to learn from existing code. It will find and recommend a fix that you can just accept and it will create a PR request for you
  • Applitools (https://applitools.com): An AI-based visual testing solution for web and mobile applications an alternative to functional testing. Applitools' AI-powered algorithms can automatically detect visual differences between the expected and actual output of an application, making it easier to identify and resolve UI issues.
  • DevMate(https://www.devmate.software/): AI-based unit test generator works with vs code and Intellij works well for C# and java uses blackbox testing approach to your functions
  • Copilot(https://github.com/features/copilot): Copilot introduced recently the ability to generate unit tests
  • Tabnine(https://www.tabnine.com/): Tabnine introduced recently the ability to generate unit tests

Debugging and error prediction

  • ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/): ChatGPT here again is pretty capable of debugging programming errors as well as system errors
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  • Bugspots (https://github.com/igrigorik/bugspots): The open-source AI-powered tool that helps developers identify error-prone parts of their codebase, analyzing historical data and applying machine learning algorithms to predict which areas of the code are most likely to contain bugs.
  • CodeGuru (https://aws.amazon.com/codeguru): Amazon's machine learning-based service that provides automated code reviews and performance recommendations, analyzing your codebase to identify potential errors, security vulnerabilities, and performance bottlenecks. Also creates automated PRs on your repository

Project Management

  • Notion (https://www.notion.so/) (Free, Paid): This is the project management tool that I personally use for my projects and it has a lot of powerful capabilities from building databases and tables of data performing aggregations and creating views, documentation, integration with tool's that can capture notes you take from books and more. You can also find prebuilt templates for pretty much anything. Not too long ago they release AI features as well that help you summarize, create action items, generate text and change the tone of the text and so on see the short clip below. I use it for various tasks from tracking spending and budgeting to planning trips or todos as well as summarizing notes from books I read. I highly recommend you try it out
  • Motion (https://www.usemotion.com): Motion has this great feature of managing your calendar and updating it as you get more tasks that need doing see this short video, Motion’s Intelligent Calendar takes your meetings tasks todos, and activities. Then, creates an optimized schedule. If  you have a new activity you need to find time for it will reorganize your calendar to fit it, it also offers project management views and features
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  • ClickUp (https://clickup.com): The comprehensive project management tool that incorporates AI for intelligent task prioritization, time estimation, and resource allocation suggestions, analyzing past project data to predict the likelihood of meeting deadlines. This app aims to replace a lot of apps as per their documentation it can perform the function of Asana|Monday|Jira as well as Slack. with new AI features like built-in chatGPT features to allow you to summarize Docs, draft emails, compose blogs, generate ideas, and more

Conclusion

AI development tools are transforming the way developers spend their time. by automating tedious tasks, the tools empower developers to produce higher-quality code faster, find hard-to-detect bugs and performance bottlenecks, and simplify and streamline the development process in general

This guide provides an overview of the most promising AI-driven tools, serving as a reference for developers and companies to leverage the power of AI. As the world of AI continues to evolve, we can expect more innovative tools and frameworks to emerge. If you liked this article click the subscribe button and you'll be notified about the upcoming articles I post. Are you using a tool I haven't mentioned above? leave a comment below