Best AI tools for enhancing productivity in software development?

Question

What are the best AI tools for actual coding productivity right now because Copilot is honestly starting to drive me insane? I've been doing this for nearly a decade but I've hit a wall with my current setup and everything feels so slow lately.

I'm working on this massive React migration for a client in Seattle and the deadlines are getting really tight but Copilot keeps giving me these weird hallucinations for our legacy components. I spend way more time debugging its trash suggestions than actually shipping code. Is there anything better for deep context or maybe something that helps with documentation and testing specifically? I've got a decent budget for tools if they actually work but man I'm just so tired of the hype not meeting reality...

nqwepgstpf · Accepted Answer

Just saw this thread and honestly, I totally get the frustration. I had high hopes for the standard setup but unfortunately most of it just feels like a glorified autocomplete that doesnt actually understand my project structure. Spending a few weeks trying to make the default tools work for a similar refactor was just a massive waste of time tbh. For that legacy React mess you are dealing with, you might want to look at Sourcegraph Cody AI Pro. I had some issues with it early on but the latest version is much better at searching across your entire codebase than Copilot is. It actually indexes your local files so it doesnt just hallucinate some random library version from five years ago. Its like 20 bucks a month but if it saves you an hour of debugging trash suggestions, it pays for itself. Check their documentation on repository indexing to get the most out of it. Another tool worth mentioning is Supermaven Pro Code Completion. Its got a massive 1-million-token context window which sounds like pure marketing hype but it actually handles large files way better than the others. It wont fix your legacy logic for you but it stays out of the way and the latency is basically zero. Just a heads up though, the free tier is kinda mid compared to the paid subscription. Its definitely not perfect and still makes mistakes but it feels less like a constant struggle...

swtvotitfd · Answer

Saw this this morning. If context is the bottleneck, definitely try Cursor Code Editor v0.40.1. It indexes local files way better than Copilot. Using the Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet API usually gives much cleaner results for complex React refactoring. For the testing part, CodiumAI Codiumate Plugin is solid for generating actual edge cases instead of just happy path boilerplate. Itll save you a ton of debugging time.

inrels · Answer

I totally feel your pain with those hallucinations. Ngl, I went through the exact same thing last year while refactoring a messy legacy codebase. My setup back then was driving me up the wall because it just couldnt grasp how our internal modules talked to each other. It kept spitting out code that looked right but was actually total nonsense once I tried to run it. I finally swapped over to a different environment that actually indexes the entire codebase. It was like night and day... suddenly the suggestions actually made sense in context. I would suggest being really careful with those auto-fix features though. Even with a better setup, you might want to consider doing manual reviews for a while until you trust it. Make sure to look into how much of your project the tool can actually 'see' at once. Having that deeper context saved my life when the deadlines got tight.