What's your favorite criminally-underrated AI coding tool?
I recently installed @Augment Code based on an ad somewhere, and I'm super impressed, but haven't heard a peep about it in most channels. But it got me wondering what else I'm missing. This is a crowded field with a few frontrunners and a lot of more esoteric newcomers, but I want to know about the ones that blow your mind but hardly get any coverage.
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Oh, and another for the list: @Codebuff — Some flaws, but it's the only one I've used that will do things like run unit tests and respond to failures without intervention. And because it's CLI-based, it works in any workflow.
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@ken_miller4 It's kind of interesting and validating that Claude launched something similar recently -
an AI agent in Terminal.
@Zed — especially with their new Zeta model.
S/O to Nia too, though I haven't dug in.
And don't miss Factory's launch tomorrow! 😉
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@chrismessina I've been hearing great things about Zed recently from highly technical friends outside the Silicon Valley hype bubble. They were later to the party with AI assist, but...maybe fashionably late? :)
@rajiv_ayyangar it's from the team that originally created @Atom Editor. They've had a code copilot for some time, but it was harder to use and couldn't work over your entire codebase like Cursor or Windsurf. That seems to be changing now.
Furthermore, Zed is extremely developer friendly and (IMO) superior to VS Code because it's written in Rust and adopts a lot of compelling modern developer flourishes from not-Microsoft land.
It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but I enjoy using it as my go-to editor when I'm focused on text or editing other scripts.
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@rajiv_ayyangar @chrismessina I like Zed a lot, especially its relatively small memory footprint and snappy performance, but Intellij's latent type detection for Ruby is so good I can't give it up.
I think Windsurf (https://wind.surf) isn't getting nearly the attention it should compared to Cursor.
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@jdh313 What's your take, Jacob? Why is it better?
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@jdh313 I'd say windsurf is one of the front-runners.
AI understanding Large context. is the next frontier in AI code editors. I have seen some fringe editors here on PH that has that. But also I think its right around the corner for cursor and vscode github copilot. As for other frontiers with AI coding. I would say. That o3 mini was just added for free in github copilot for vscode. And using google flash thinking and pro also free. In copilot and cursor. Also really exited about pplx deep research. You can ask it to refactor your code with the deep research by hitting pplx edit button. TBH Ai coding is pretty unhinged right now. As a dev. I feel like a kid in a candy store. 🍭 Only limitation right now I feel is having great ideas and time. What a time to be alive 🚀
@sentry_co Yeah but realistically would you actually put AI generated code into production without actually not just testing but auditing the whole thing? The stakes are lower but it carries similar connotations to the lawyers who are submitting AI-written motions, except the lack of tech-competent lawyers outside of IP/In house work is well known, but people expect software engineers to be able to write and debug code at the very least.
@Cursor so far has been a 10x factor for us!
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@hugo_richard2 That's cool, but I'd consider Cursor one of the most-hyped apps. No?
@rajiv_ayyangar Agreed Cursor is definitely hyped right now, but so far - we're producing 1 features/week with it so we're loving the results
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I bet@lagap @bernatfortet have thoughts!
This ai agent builder is a new and powerful tool to browse web using AI agents.
@Github Copilot mostly used (made for only coding purposes).