IntelliCode is a suite of AI-assisted tools that Microsoft introduced at Build 2018 in April. The capabilities give developers more solutions for boosting productivity. Visual Studio has already seen the first of these features in preview, but now Microsoft is bringing machine learning to Python. The company says its AI has been trained on over 2,000 open-source repos. Developers using Python in Visual Studio Code can now leverage IntelliCode through the IntelliSense AI tool. Microsoft plans to bring more solutions form the IntelliCode suite to VS in the future. IntelliSense is a code completion tool that helps developers speed up work. It is a predictive text of sorts for coders, offering suggestions as a dev types. Of course, coding can be complex and suggestions for a typed character could number in the hundreds. Instead of needing to type numerous characters before the correct suggestion is made, IntelliSense uses an AI algorithm to select the most relevant code based on what code has already been written.
Python Language Server
IntelliCode is an integration into Microsoft’s Python Language Server. Released this month in Visual Studio Code, the server is fluid in functionality with IntelliSense: “IntelliCode will prompt you to enable the Microsoft Python Language server, so you’ll also notice that you get enhanced IntelliSense with syntax errors and basic warnings will now appear as you type. IntelliSense, combined with the new Python Language Server, is also richer: the language server uses open-source typeshed definitions to provide completions for types where they can’t be statically inferred.”
