JetBrains AI vs. GitHub Copilot: Which AI Tool is Best for Your Coding?

Let’s deep dive into the hottest topic in developer’s tea break: GitHub Copilot vs Jetbrains AI

In this modern era of AI, different tools can help you in your daily tasks, and that applies to development as well, where you can get assistance from different tools; there are multiple tools in the market, but the two of the most favourite ones are GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI. So today, we will be analysing both of these to see their capabilities and whether they can help you in your daily coding challenges. 

GitHub Copilot And Its Features:

Without a doubt, GitHub Copilot is first one of its kind and was most popular as Github designed it along with OpenAI. It provides direct help in almost all famous IDEs like VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains IDEs and Neovim. It will analyse the code and provide different functions or improvements in code snippets. One of the best functions of Github Copilot is that it can understand the context of code and help you write in your code style. You never have to paste your code snippets in ChatGPT.

You can also read about the Top AI Trends of 2024.

As GitHub is the designer of GitHub Copilot, it is trained on vast data of open-source projects and code snippets. This enables Github Copilot to provide diverse solutions. Due to its diverse nature, Github Copilot can provide boilerplate codes and starter templates for projects.

It was primarily designed for Visual Studio Code but also supports other editors, such as Neovim and all other JetBrains IDEs. It can understand natural language descriptions and translate them into functional code snippets; you don’t need to write prompts in GPT.

Some of the main features of GitHub Copilot are:

1.  Versatile Usage
   •  This tool’s versatility for developers is due to its ability to work across multiple editors and environments.
2. Creative Code Suggestions
   •  As it learns from a large dataset of open-source projects, it provides innovative and unconventional code suggestions.
3. Rapid Prototyping
   •  Provides boilerplates and template code, which reduces the efforts to write repetitive coding tasks.
4. Community Impact
   •  Github repos integration enhances collaboration and code sharing, prompting community-driven development.

These are some of the main features of JetBrains AI’s main competitor. Now is the time to examine JetBrains AI.

If you are interested in AI, Read more about Top AI Trends in 2024.

JetBrains AI and its features:

Without a doubt, JetBrains AI is one of the best AI assistant tools on paper and a competitor of GitHub Copilot. It was designed by Jetbrains and was primarily designed for Jetbrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and Webstorm, which are the most famous among developers. Like Github Copilot, it uses machine learning models to provide context-aware code suggestions and completion. 

It is designed primarily for Jetbrains IDEs. It learns from specific projects and provides more accurate and relevant code suggestions. It also includes advanced code quality improvement tools like linting, code inspection, and error detection.

One major drawback is that it is only compatible with JetBrains IDEs. Still, it also leverages this and provides a very strong context-aware solution rather than just throwing out some functions, so it depends on users’ needs whether this becomes a feature or a drawback.

Some main features  of JetBrains AI are:

1.  Enhanced Productivity
   •  It reduces developers’ effort and time by minimising the time spent on routine coding tasks and minimising errors.
2.  Seamless Refactoring
   •  Due to JetBrains AI’s context-aware nature, it can easily refactor your code without introducing new bugs.
3. Deep Context Understanding:
   • By leveraging the entire project, JetBrains AI offer more precise and contextually relevant code completion.
4. Developer Adoption
   •  Due to its compatibility only with JetBrains IDEs, it leverages the powerful features of those IDEs. This makes JetBrains AI a natural extension of their existing workflows.

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Precausitions while using AI assitants:

In this era of AI assistants, GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI are just a few initial players. Other big names include Tabnine, Kite, Codota, and Sourcery.

But with all these assistants, I suggest beginners avoid them and focus on solving the problems rather than writing the whole functionality via AI, which can be buggy sometimes. If you don’t have the expertise, you will have to debug that later, which will be a bigger problem.  That can kill your creativity and problem-solving.

But this is a must-have if you are an experienced developer looking to save time and effort. In the future, we will have built-in auto-correction in every tool. This AI assistant will be a must-have in every tool and IDE.

Remember you are the Poilet, and AI assistant tools are your copilots: your pair programmers.

If you are interested in future of AI, read about Will GPT-5 have PHD level Intelligence?

Conclusion

Ultimately, if you ask me if these AI assistants are worth it, I would say yes; they reduce your effort and minimise your time. So let’s decide which one is better in GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI:

This purely depends on the use case. Let’s conclude this with an example of two developers. 

Developer one primarily uses Jetbrains IDEs and works on context-rich enterprise projects. He/she should definitely go with JetBrains AI. due to its context-driven approach, advanced refactoring capabilities and robust static code analysis.

Now, developer two is a freelancer or works on small projects and is not IDE-dependent. He should definitely go with Github Copilot due to its versatility across multiple editors, extensive language coverage and innovative code suggestions.

Happy Coding Everyone.