AI Coding Olympics: Tools Battle for Gold 🏆 - #6

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Issue #6 • 2025-05-20

AI Coding Weekly

Hey readers! 👋 This week we’re witnessing an actual AI Coding Olympics where Claude emerged victorious, while OpenAI throws its hat into the ring with Codex—their most advanced coding agent yet. Buckle up for a newsletter packed with AI coding tool showdowns, confidence ratings, and the surprising success of thread sharing that’s changing how teams collaborate!

🧪 BETA NOTE: This newsletter is still in beta, and we’re working out the kinks. We’d love your feedback on what’s working and what could be improved! Just hit reply to share your thoughts.

This Week’s Highlights 🔥

What is the best vibe coding tool on the market? — In this comprehensive 30-minute comparison of seven AI coding tools, Claude with Desktop Commander emerged as the winner for its efficiency and cost-effectiveness. (Ed: nice 30-minute deep dive into comparing AI assisted coding tools and their costs)
Eduards Ruzga

OpenAI launches Codex, an AI coding agent, in ChatGPT — OpenAI’s much-anticipated Codex, powered by the new codex-1 model, is now available as a research preview within ChatGPT for Pro, Enterprise, and Team subscribers. (Ed: much-anticipated release launch of OpenAI’s coding assistant. we’ll see how it stacks up in the coming weeks.)
TechCrunch

ChatGPT Codex: The Missing Manual — This comprehensive guide outlines best practices for using OpenAI’s new autonomous software engineering agent, including maintaining modular codebases and leveraging the hierarchical Agents.md for instructions.
Latent.Space

OpenAI Codex — Simon Willison breaks down OpenAI’s new Codex product, highlighting its cloud-based approach, two operational modes, and the transparency of its full Dockerfile release. (Ed: Simon always has great takes)
Simon Willison

Launch YC: Relace - Cheaper, faster, and more reliable AI code generation — Y Combinator-backed Relace introduces impressively fast code generation models, including Instant Apply which merges code snippets at over 2500 tokens per second. (Ed: pretty cool demo showing absurdly-fast coding changes)
Y Combinator

AI Coding Tools & Updates 🛠️

GitHub Copilot: Meet the new coding agent — GitHub’s new Copilot coding agent automates feature implementation by running in the background and submitting work as pull requests, available to Enterprise and Pro+ customers.
GitHub

Cognition | Devin 2.1 — Devin’s latest update introduces a confidence rating system (🟢, 🟡, 🔴) that correlates with task success rates and adds built-in codebase intelligence for answering code-related questions.
cognition.ai

No more waitlist — Amp is now available to everyone! — Amp has removed its waitlist, making the platform accessible to all users who sign up at ampcode.com.
@AmpCode

Amp’s team thread sharing is a surprise hit — Amp’s unique thread sharing feature, which resembles Git branches, has become unexpectedly popular despite initial skepticism during development.
@sqs

JetBrains AI Assistant – Now in Visual Studio Code — JetBrains expands its AI capabilities to VS Code, offering features like code completion and error detection with support for multiple programming languages and AI models.
JetBrains Blog

Alex - Xcode AI Coding Assistant — Version 3.1 of Alex introduces simulator testing, console log reading, multi-folder indexing, and an infinite chat feature with context bar.
Alex Inc.

Prompt Enhancer live in Augment Chat — Augment Code’s new feature automatically pulls relevant context from codebases to improve prompt clarity and effectiveness, currently available in VS Code with IntelliJ support coming soon.
Augment Code

Release v3.15.2 · cline/cline — Cline’s latest release adds telemetry controls, optimizes parsing for large text renders, and improves user interactions.
github-actions[bot]

Launch Log 2 — Warp’s second launch log introduces Model Context Protocol support, improved AI capabilities with context retention, and faster command search functionality.
Warp Team

Insights & Perspectives 🧠

Type-constrained code generation with language models — This discussion explores how smaller AI labs could excel by creating specialized models for specific programming languages, potentially outperforming larger models in niche areas. (Ed: interesting. the next step in AI assisted coding might be language-specific LLMs.)
Hacker News

The Perverse Incentives of Vibe Coding — This article examines how AI coding assistants can create addiction cycles and incentivize verbose code generation, suggesting strategies like enforced planning to manage these issues.
fred benenson

Most people use Agents to write code — This thread highlights the underutilized potential of AI coding agents for understanding code and facilitating thinking, suggesting they can provide significant value as collaborative tools.
@augmentcode

Vibe Coding SimCity II: Injecting Chaos with Natural Disasters and AI Tools — The AI Native Dev podcast explores the challenges of using AI for coding, highlighting issues with context loss and the limitations of disposable code.
AI Native Dev

Sometimes, solution is deleting code, not adding more — This tweet criticizes AI code assistants for failing to recognize when code deletion is the optimal solution, comparing them to “super-smart juniors” who need guidance.
@enesakar

Research & Benchmarks 📊

AI Coding Benchmark: Best AI Coders Based on 5 Criteria — AIMultiple Research evaluates leading AI coding assistants on compliance, code quality, generation amount, performance, and security, with Cursor, Amazon Q, GitLab, and Replit emerging as top performers.
AIMultiple Research

DeepMind claims its newest AI tool is a whiz at math and science problems — DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve demonstrates a 75% success rate in rediscovering best-known answers to math problems and improves solutions in 20% of cases.
TechCrunch
(Ed: this might make code snippets better)

SimilarWeb’s new AI usage report reveals 5 surprising findings — Developer-focused AI and coding tools have seen a 75% increase over 12 weeks, with platforms like Lovable and Cursor experiencing explosive growth.
VentureBeat
(Ed: the takeaway here is volatility. keep those subscriptions monthly, not annually!)

Tutorials & Workflows 📝

Sharing My AI-Powered Coding Workflow To Build Apps REALLY Fast — This video shares an efficient AI-powered workflow for solo developers, emphasizing UI design first, using tools like Magic Patterns for prototyping, and leveraging AI code editors like Cursor. by Your Average Tech Bro

This Free AI Coding Tool Crushes Cursor & Windsurf — This guide explores free AI coding tools like Zed AI, Tabby AI, and Void Editor as alternatives to paid options, highlighting Zed AI for its user-friendly interface. by Daniel Ferrera (Ed: “crushes” is a strong term. free is great, but tokens and great developer experiences cost money.)

Getting AI to write good SQL — Users share experiences with AI-generated SQL queries, highlighting both advantages and limitations while emphasizing the need for human oversight. by Hacker News

Developer Tools & Integrations 🔌

GitHub - cameroncooke/XcodeBuildMCP — This Model Context Protocol server provides Xcode-related tools for AI assistants, enabling programmatic operations like project management and simulator control. cameroncooke
cameroncooke

I accidentally DIY’d this with the GitHub extension — Theo shares his excitement about the GitHub extension that renders PR comments inline in VS Code, particularly impressed by CodeRabbit’s real-time code corrections. @theo
@theo

Top 5 low-code platforms for legacy modernization in 2025 — This guide highlights platforms that streamline application development and integration, helping businesses transform outdated systems into modern solutions. ToolJet
ToolJet

Industry Perspectives 🌐

Keeping Up With AI: The Painful New Mandate for Software Engineers — By 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants, requiring new skills in articulating requirements clearly for AI tools. *The New Stack*
The New Stack

Takeaways from Coding with AI — The AI Codecon virtual conference featured insights from experts like Harper Reed and Kent Beck on how AI is transforming coding practices while emphasizing the continued importance of foundational skills. *O’Reilly Media*
O’Reilly Media

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This newsletter was created using AI technology and reviewed by humans at Data Drift Press.