Google Announces Free Gemini Code Assist For Individuals

Google is announcing a free version of Gemini Code Assist that lets developers “generate, explain and improve code.” All that’s needed is a personal Gmail account.

Gemini Code Assist for individuals is powered by Gemini 2.0, which has been fine-tuned for developers “by analyzing and validating a large number of real-world coding use cases.” Currently in public preview, it “supports all programming languages in the public domain.”

With an “up to 128,000 token support in chat.” developers can use “large files and ground Gemini Code Assist with a broader understanding of their local codebases.”

The chat feature also makes it easy for developers to focus on the creative part of development, while leaving the necessary, but repetitive steps — like writing comments or automated tests from requirements — to Gemini.

Google touts “up to 180,000 code completions per month” compared to the 2,000 offered by free competitors. 

The ceiling of AI assistance is so high with Gemini Code Assist, it’s a challenge for even the most intensive, professional developers to reach.

Google today is offering Gemini Code Assist for GitHub to provide “free, AI-powered code reviews for both public and private repositories.” There’s support for custom style guidelines, while the tool can “detect stylistic issues and bugs and automatically suggest code changes and fixes.”

There’s also Code Assist in Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs for creating code snippets, debugging existing code, and asking questions about how things work.

Example use cases include:

• “Build me a simple HTML form with fields for name, email, and message, and then add a ‘submit’ button” “Write a script that sends a daily email with the latest weather forecast”
• “Explain what this Python code snippet does and find any errors”

Google Cloud has offered a paid version of Gemini Code Assist to enterprise customers for the past year, while there’s similar functionality in Android Studio and Firebase.

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