Many development platforms provide autocomplete features to help programmers become more productive, but for the most part they’re limited to filling in basic syntax elements such as library names. Codota Dot Com Ltd. is looking to change that.

The Israeli startup on Thursday said it has secured a $2 million investment from Khosla Ventures to drive the adoption of its namesake programming assistant, which employs artificial intelligence to provide project suggestions. Codota uses machine learning models to scan the massive amounts of publicly accessible code in GitHub, Stack Overflow and other parts of the web for useful snippets. Another set of algorithms then analyzes the program that a user is writing to identify potential matches.

If a developer is working on a piece of code designed to establish a connection with a cloud service, then Codota might surface a snippet from Stack Overflow for sorting out network errors. Recommendations appear in a sidebar that can blend directly into the user’s development platform of choice.

Once a developer has identified a piece of code to include in a project, the snippet can be dragged-and-dropped into the relevant section. The Codota sidebar doubles as a search tool that provides the ability to look up programs with specific features. The idea is to removes the need to switch back and forth from a browser window, which is a major convenience given how extensively developers rely on sites such as Stack Overflow in their work.

The end result is that code can be produced noticeably faster. Codota has the potential to save upwards of hours at a time by surfacing snippets that a developer would either have to look up manually or implement from scratch. Added up across an entire application team or organization, this amounts to a major productivity gain.

Codota currently only supports Java, the go-to language for building enterprise software. The startup plans to add support for JavaScript and several other languages in the coming months. 

Image: Codota