alt Hacker NewsI tried using the AI assistant when it came out but seemingly was too stupid to figure out how to use it correctly. I tried to get it to write single functions or short blocks of code for me, but it would always start rewriting the whole file from scratch which was way too slow.
Has it gotten better since, or did I just do it wrong from the beginning?
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I have used Junie their new system quite a lot recently it is much much better. It solved problems that Claude code was struggling with (but couldn't solve some that Claude code did solve with max thinking).
It is still slowish, but the quality is definitely getting there.
I have started to use it recently, and I am finding it useful as a code assistant.
1) It has been doing a good job reviewing my code, and could suggest some interesting performance improvements in the past.
2) It is good to generate things such as simple REST endooints, that sort of thing. Saves you a bunch of typing, even if you have to do some finishing touches yourself.
3) I think it generally does a decent job writing tests as well.
4) Current models have gotten really good at helping me explore libraries I am not very familiar with.
The AI hype may be very annoying, and I am skeptical that in the long run it makes financial sense, but it is a productivity boost once you get the hang of it.
It has gotten a lot better IMHO in the latest 2025 release. Ability to enable/disable per project. Ability to favor local models over online models (online as fallback), support for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, etc. Beter integration overall.
I'm not a user, but I have accidentally hit cmd+/ and I believe that is what you're looking for.
It pops up a little input inline, rather than a chat or autocomplete.
The jetbrains ai assistant was truly terrible when it came out. They blocked the use of the major LLM’s and had supposedly a better European (?) LLM for coding, but I could not get it to work in any reasonable way. Now though they do allow you to use the major LLMs I believe and so it’s immediately much more useful. There is also Junie, which I’m not sure how that compares it’s a bit confusing but also seems better.