Last updated Nov 23, 2024

Organizations have ever-increasing reliance on varied technologies and systems. All of these require some level of maintenance and administration. When you have a certain team size or organization size, doing hunt-and-click in the graphical user interface (GUI) simply doesn’t scale well. Enter scripting! IT professionals have used scripting for years to automate and make more efficient complex and repetitive maintenance and administration tasks.

A common debate IT professionals will face is whether it will be worth it to automate something due to the amount of time it will take to get a functioning script, and how long it will take before that time investment will provide any returns. Thus, the faster you can create a script, the better. In this short article, let’s have a look at two of my go-to tools to supercharge your scripting.

Supermaven is a code editor extension compatible with VS Code, JetBrains, and Neovim that offers lightning-fast code completion. This is made possible by the proprietary Babble large language model that is highly optimized for coding, alongside a larger-than-usual context window (1 million tokens, on the paid plan). Their website claims 2x faster code writing along with:

• Availability of multiple models including Babbel, GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and GPT-4
• Availability of hotkeys to quickly view diffs, apply changes, start conversations, and switch models
• Links the model’s generated code responses back to your original code to show diffs and apply changes when using Supermaven Chat

Their website also features a great real-time speed video example of just how quickly Supermaven can help you get your code up and running. I’ve used Supermaven for several months after trying it the first time. It’s ability to understand your codebase and keep it in context is incredibly helpful. Potentially one of the most helpful uses is when you make a change in a file which would require updates elsewhere in the file, tab-completion can lead you to the next place your code needs updated based on your change. If you’re not into “chatting” with large language models, don’t fret. The simple tab completion is powerful enough by itself and is my primary way to use it.

Cursor, on the other hand, is a full-fledged code editor rather than an extension. If you download it, there’s a high chance you’ll think “hey, this looks familiar,” and it should! Cursor is a fork of Microsoft’s VS Code editor and boasts compatibility with VS Code extensions along with a slew of artificial intelligence features. Like Supermaven, the intelligent tab completion is incredibly helpful. Other helpful features include smart rewrites, formatting, and cursor prediction that helps direct you to the next changes it thinks you’ll make to your code based on changes you just made. There is an additional feature that lets you chat with your entire codebase. And for those who are less confident in their ability to make certain edits, Cursor lets you write code in plain English, and it can generate the code for you. Making this even more powerful is the ability for the chat to search the web as well as custom defined documentation for your libraries or modules. I’ve been using Cursor for the past month and have found it to be a great replacement for VS Code in most situations.

Both Supermaven and Cursor offer powerful tools that enable you to develop scripts at blazing fast speeds. By leveraging large language models tuned for coding, features such as code completion and intelligent suggestions significantly reduce development time and improve code quality and consistency. Who doesn’t like saving time when creating solutions that save time? When you have the chance, definitely don’t miss out on giving these two tools a try.