This announcement introduces a new tool that gives students, freelancers, and hobbyists the chance to use advanced AI technology for coding help. With this tool, users can create code, fix errors, and adjust applications without needing to jump between different programs or screens.
Ryan J. Salva, who is the senior director of product management at Google, shared that the free version of this tool is more generous compared to similar offers from competitors like GitHub Copilot, which has stricter limits on usage. For instance, while Copilot allows only 2,000 code completions each month, Google’s version lets users generate up to 180,000 code completions per month. This means that even those who code frequently will have plenty of resources at their fingertips.
Called Gemini Code Assist, this tool uses Google’s Gemini 2.0 AI model. It can generate complete blocks of code and provide real-time support in popular coding environments such as Visual Studio Code, GitHub, and JetBrains. Users can work with a wide variety of programming languages, as the tool supports all public domain languages. It’s also designed to understand natural language requests, which means users can ask for things like creating HTML forms or finishing specific coding tasks just by describing what they want in plain language.
Gemini Code Assist can manage up to 38 different programming languages and can process a large amount of input data at once—up to 128,000 tokens. While the free version is very powerful, it does not include some premium features offered in the paid versions. These premium features include integration with Google Cloud services and the ability to customize the tool using private code data sources, which are useful for businesses and organizations with more complicated programming needs.
To take advantage of these advanced features, developers will need to sign up for the paid versions targeted at larger enterprises. Nonetheless, for individual users, this new tool offers a strong and accessible way to improve their coding practice without any cost.
Overall, Gemini Code Assist appears to be a significant development in coding tools. It not only provides a vast number of code completions but also supports various programming languages, making it a valuable resource for all types of developers. With its user-friendly features and the ability to respond to natural language, this tool can potentially streamline the coding process and help users become more efficient in their work.