It seems like another year has passed, and the biggest change at work is a significant increase in AI participation. Previously, switching between different development languages required developers to be familiar with various language-specific API interfaces. Now, these basic code snippets can all be generated by AI, which is a huge blessing for developers.
ChatGPT
As early as 2023, I’ve written two simple introductory articles about it. Now it’s been 25 years – how to put this… I haven’t felt a significant improvement. It still needs to develop its own cognition, be able to reasonably break down tasks, and, of course, most importantly, identify whether AI-generated code contains bugs.
Github Copilot
It was a long time ago, but I saw some information saying that Singapore deployed the server and it’s available for use in China. No longer need to maintain a VPN connection for extended periods. Of course, when logging in, you still need to connect to a VPN, but this VPN only needs to be used during login, and then you can turn it off.
In daily use, Github Copilot is also heavily relied upon. This plugin can be directly used in VS Code and Visual Studio without switching between the two applications. Compared to ChatGPT, Github Copilot provides better support for projects, is more user-friendly in interaction, and allows you to feed partial local files to it – “training” the AI – so that the generated code is more aligned with your project.
Cursor AI
Recently I’ve seen a new AI programming IDE, Cursor AI. This IDE is based on Github Copilot, but this IDE is more intelligent and can help you create files directly. I tried it briefly and found it to be pretty good, but its understanding of existing projects isn’t quite there yet. When working with large local project files, or for major refactoring, optimization, and adjustments, developers still need to break down tasks. Here’s an example: Switching to Cursor’s engineering mode, inputting the following content: “Create a personal resume webpage, supporting multiple different styles switching, and remember to fill in some personal information for data display.” After several back-and-forths (pulling), you can get the following webpage. Of course, this webpage is relatively simple, but it’s still pretty good for beginners.
Currently, registered users can enjoy a free trial of 150 advanced APIs, while paying users are limited to 5000 advanced APIs.