3 Best AI Powered VSCode extensions

3 Best AI powered VSCode extension

If you can’t beat them… 👀

With the arrival of ChatGPT, it seems like AI is all the hype now, at first like any software developer, I wasn’t to much at first, “How could it replace me, surely the AI overlord doesn’t consider the X, Y and Z…”, I asked myself over my daily cup of coffee?

After I sniffed enough copium to feel good about myself, I read a quote which put it in perspective quite quickly:

AI might not be fully be able to replace a human, but a Human using AI will - some random guy on the internet

So instead of fighting the rise of new tools like ChatGPT and the newly Released GPT-4 multi-modal, it’s time to start integrating these into your workflow and become a better developer.

1. GitHub Copilot 🧑🏻‍💻

Now…this will probably not be of any surprise, GitHub Co-pilot is possibly one of the more well known AI tools out there and after playing around with it for about a month, I do have some gripes with it, but it did streamline my workflow, especially when it came to repetitive tasks,

Some times the things it recommend are completely wrong, but often times it gives you just enough boilerplate logic to be useful.

Try Github Co-Pilot here

2. Mintlify Writer ✍🏻

During some point in your career, you will be asked to Document your code and that’s when you soul slowly dies inside, for the following reasons:

1. You might be fired 👀 (…)
2. Other Devs are moving onto your project and you don’t want them touching your stuff
3. It’s one long an boring process

Enter Mintlify Writer, you can select a code snippet and it will analyse what the code’s doing and generate a nice comment with the required parameters, with a nice explanation about what it’s doing.

Try Mintlify Writer here

3. Code Attendant 👩🏻‍✈️

So I’ll be honest most of the AI tools currently are mostly focused on generating code, “but, Mr., you already have Github Co-pilot on the list, why to I have another one?”.

And to that I say, Code Attendant is for those annoying code snippets you always need to google because you possibly forgot about the feature that was already built into the language. Haven’t worked with JavaScript in a while, you possibly forgot how to get all specific elements using the querySelector, this is where this is extremely useful, I am not dragging my browser out and searching something I forgot for the millionth time and break my state of flow, instead I can do everything while I am busy developing.

Try it here

Summary

AI is here to stay and tools like these should be used and learned as it combines the best of both world and makes one much more productive, and stay in the state of flow for longer and easier.

TL:DR

1. Github Co-Pilot
2. Mintlify Writer
3. Code Attendant

How to Setup SSH on GitHub

How to setup SSH key for Github

This will focus on macOs/Linux operating systems

Generating a SSH key

On unix operating systems the ssh keys that you generate will generally be in the .ssh folder. To get to the folder use the following command:

$ cd ~/.ssh

Once you are inside the folder you can now generate the SSH key:

$ ssh-keygen -o -t rsa -C "{your@email.com}"

This will prompt you where to save the file, since we want it in this folder just hit return

It will then prompt you for a passphrase which isn’t necessary, (if you want to add it that’s fine), just hit return Will then prompt for confirmation, just hit return

It should return the following

The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:NnATrRJrSpO1nIjhekAd2uvcfsRBVIoBec9O+5ezyRk example@example
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 3072]----+
|  .o+...oo       |
| .+o .=....      |
|.o +.*=*o.       |
|. o * BB..       |
| o o ++.S        |
|. + o  * .       |
| . o .. .  E.    |
|    .  . ..++    |
|     ..   .=o    |
+----[SHA256]-----+

You can verify that it generated a key by using the following command:

$ cat id_rsa.pub

=== Output ===
ssh-rsa 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 example@example

Once you verified that the key is generated now we can add it to GitHub.

Adding to GitHub

Once you have logged into you GitHub account, click on your Profile Image -> Settings:

You can then on the left find the SSH and GPG Keys:

Once there Click on the New SSH Key:

And you can then Copy & Paste the value you outputed previously:

And you can then click Add SSH Key, this might prompt you some MFA code or password input, that’s fine.

After all this is done you can now use SSH with you Repos

Cloning a Repo

Once you are done you can go to any repo you want and add select the SSH value instead of HTTPS:

Once you enter the SSH value, it will prompt you to add the SSH fingerprint you can just enter yes and hit return:

$ git clone git@github.com:Gl4SS3S/MyRepo.git

=========

Cloning into 'MyRepo'...
The authenticity of host 'github.com (140.82.121.3)' can't be established.
{Your_Value} key fingerprint is SHA256: {Your Fingerprint}
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes

And you should be good to go! Happy Coding.