AI-Assisted Coding: A Practical Guide to Boosting Software Development with ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Ollama, Aider, and Beyond

Generative AI is transforming software development. Stay on the cutting edge with this guide to AI pair programming! Learn how to make the most of modern tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to improve your coding. Automate refactoring, debugging, and other tedious tasks, and use techniques such as prompt engineering and retrieval-augmented generation to get the code you need. Follow practical examples that show how you can program faster, more efficiently, and with fewer errors with the help of AI.

In this book, you’ll learn about:

a. Hype versus Reality
Learn from expert developers to understand the possibilities (and pitfalls) of AI tools. With the help of practical code examples, see how to use AI helpers correctly to their full potential.

b. Assistants for All Tasks
This guide gives you an up-to-date overview of all aspects of AI-assisted coding: GitHub Copilot autocompletions, project bootstrapping with OpenHands, debugging and refactoring, application development, and more.

c. In the Cloud or Local?
Use OpenAI’s API to integrate AI models directly into your own scripts and automations—or use local large language models (LLMs) to work independently of cloud services.

Highlights include:

1) Structured programming with AI
2) Debugging
3) Unit testing
4) Refactoring
5) Automatic document creation
6) Database development and design
7) Scripting and administration
8) Local large language models (LLMs)
9) Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
10) ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot
11) OpenHands
12) OpenAI API