Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ast-grep VS Carbon

Compare ast-grep VS Carbon and see what are their differences

ast-grep logo ast-grep

⚡A polyglot tool for code searching, linting, rewriting!

Carbon logo Carbon

Create and share beautiful images of your source code.
  • ast-grep Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-10
  • Carbon Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

ast-grep features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Carbon features and specs

  • Aesthetically Pleasing
    Carbon allows you to create beautiful images of your source code, which can be easily shared on social media, presentations, or documentation.
  • Customization Options
    Provides various customization options such as themes, background colors, window controls, font styles, and more, allowing users to create images that match their preferences or brand identity.
  • Ease of Use
    The interface is user-friendly, enabling users to create high-quality code images with minimal effort. Simply paste your code, customize it, and export.
  • Code Syntax Highlighting
    Supports syntax highlighting for a wide range of programming languages, helping to make your code snippets more readable and visually appealing.
  • Export Options
    Allows users to export images in various formats, including PNG and SVG, ensuring versatility for different use cases.

Possible disadvantages of Carbon

  • Limited Collaboration Features
    Carbon does not support collaborative editing, making it less ideal for team-based projects where multiple users might need to work on the same snippet simultaneously.
  • No Direct Code Editing Features
    Carbon focuses on code visualization and does not provide in-depth code editing capabilities, unlike full-featured code editors.
  • Dependency on Browser
    As a web-based tool, it requires an active internet connection and may be less convenient for users who prefer offline tools.
  • Performance Limitations
    For very large snippets or heavy customization, the tool may experience performance issues or slowdowns.
  • Limited Format Support
    Does not support exporting in all possible image formats or directly integrating into platforms like content management systems without manual steps.

Analysis of Carbon

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Carbon is a good tool for creating and sharing visually appealing code snippets. It is widely appreciated in the developer community for its functionality and ease of use.

Why this product is good

  • Carbon (carbon.now.sh) is a popular tool for creating and sharing beautiful code snippets as images. It offers a clean interface, customizable themes, and syntax highlighting for numerous programming languages, making it an excellent choice for developers looking to present their code aesthetically. Its ease of use and ability to quickly generate high-resolution images are among its standout features.

Recommended for

  • Software developers looking to share code snippets on social media or blogs
  • Educators and technical writers who need to include code examples in their materials
  • Conference speakers and presenters preparing slides with code samples
  • Developers and designers seeking to build a portfolio showcasing their coding skills

ast-grep videos

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Carbon videos

Adidas YEEZY 350 V2 Carbon REVIEW & GIVEAWAY

More videos:

  • Review - Need for Speed: Carbon review - ColourShed
  • Review - Carbon Movie Malayalam Review by Sudhish Payyanur | Monsoon Media

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ast-grep and Carbon)
Productivity
15 15%
85% 85
Web App
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
10 10%
90% 90
Hiring And Recruitment
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Carbon should be more popular than ast-grep. It has been mentiond 170 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ast-grep mentions (17)

  • Developer Philosophy
    One useful tool beyond regular grep for counting the number of times a pattern appears is ast-grep [1], which allows for more sophisticated rules. [1] https://ast-grep.github.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Using ast-grep with a vue project
    The amazing ast-grep tool does not support vue and scss by default but can be configured to do so. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Mergiraf: a syntax-aware merge driver for Git
    Hi! ast-grep[1] author here. It is a tree-sitter based syntax tool to search tool. I wonder how you transition from tree-sitter to other builtin parsers? Tree-sitter gave a unified interface to all languages. Using language native parsers will require significant work for various FFI if I am not wrong. [1]: https://ast-grep.github.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Refactoring Python with Tree-sitter and Jedi
    I’ve been looking at codemod tools recently, just as a way to extend my editing toolbox. I came across https://ast-grep.github.io/, which looks like it might address part of this problem. My initial test case was to locate all calls to a method where a specific argument was ‘true’, and it handled that well - that’s the kind of thing an IDE seems to struggle with. I’m not yet sure whether it could handle renaming a... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Greppability is an underrated code metric
    Astgrep is a very useful tool. https://ast-grep.github.io/ It's not as easy to use as grep but I think one can script it to be nearly so. It has huge power but without learning it all one can do searches that grep finds difficult. e.g. Finding all the locations where a method is called and showing the parameters even if they are on multiple lines. Ultragrep - I don't love this quite as much but it does have a way... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
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Carbon mentions (170)

  • "10 Free Tools Every Developer Should Bookmark in 2025"
    *Carbon * – Beautiful Code Snippets Https://carbon.now.sh. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • HexShare – Create and share beautiful snippets of your binary/hexbytes
    Inspired by Carbon -(https://carbon.now.sh , I wanted to build a simple tool for easily sharing binary snippets. HexShare is a hex-sharing tool designed for viewing and sharing binary data with colorful byte highlighting. It works entirely offline, running client-side with no backend. You can generate visually appealing images of your hex bytes with annotations and also share configurations via a link. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • 22 Unique Developer Resources You Should Explore
    URL: https://carbon.now.sh What it does: Carbon lets you turn your code snippets into stunning visuals, perfect for sharing or embedding in blogs and presentations. Why it's great: Make your code aesthetically pleasing and shareable! Highlight your solutions or showcase your work effortlessly. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Recommend 12 free productivity tools! Make your work more effective with less effort!
    Carbon is a free online code screenshot tool that helps users create beautiful code screenshots for use in blogs, social media, or presentations. It provides a simple interface that allows users to enter their own code and choose different themes, fonts, and color schemes. Users can also adjust the code alignment, line numbers, background, shadow, etc. To better control the screenshot effect. Carbon also supports... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Must-have for slacking off! 2024 Efficient Dev Tools for Increasing Productivity
    Carbon, an online code beautification tool, lets you create visually appealing code screenshots with a simple interface, enhancing code readability. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ast-grep and Carbon, you can also consider the following products

bloop - Code-search engine for developers

Ray.so - Create beautiful images of your code

Simplify Jobs - Simplify is a common application for jobs & internships. Autofill job applications anywhere on the web, get notified when new jobs open, & seamlessly track your applications.

Codeimg.io - Create and share images of your source code

Productivity Power Tools - Extension for Visual Studio - A set of extensions to Visual Studio 2012 Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity.

Snappify - snappify is a great tool to create and adjust beautiful code snippets easily.