Meet Amazon CodeWhisperer: AWS's Revolutionary AI Coding Companion

Hello, fellow cloud engineers! Today, I’m thrilled to share an exciting announcement from Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon CodeWhisperer, the AI-powered coding companion, is now generally available! This transformative tool will change how we code, enhancing our efficiency and productivity. In this post, we’ll delve into the capabilities of CodeWhisperer and explore its potential benefits for us as cloud engineers.

Unveiling Amazon CodeWhisperer

Amazon CodeWhisperer is an innovative, real-time AI coding companion that AWS launched with the aim of streamlining the development process. It offers real-time code suggestions directly within your IDE (Integrated Development Environment), thereby eliminating the need to disrupt your workflow for research​1​. This groundbreaking tool shines when you’re coding routine tasks, grappling with unfamiliar APIs or SDKs, or endeavoring to use AWS APIs effectively.

CodeWhisperer’s Value Proposition for Cloud Engineers

As cloud engineers, we often face the challenge of writing code for intricate and rapidly evolving environments. CodeWhisperer steps in to boost productivity and streamline our tasks. Here’s how:

• Real-Time Code Suggestions: CodeWhisperer provides instantaneous code suggestions within popular IDEs like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ IDEA. This feature enables us to write code swiftly and accurately, thus increasing our productivity.

• Security Scanning: CodeWhisperer also stands out for its ability to perform security scans. It can identify hard-to-detect vulnerabilities and suggest remediations, contributing to secure and responsible coding. As of now, security scans are supported only in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs for Python, Java, and JavaScript​1​.

• Responsible AI Utilization: CodeWhisperer filters out potentially biased or unfair code suggestions and flags suggestions resembling specific open-source training data. This responsible AI usage helps us reuse code with confidence.

• Reference Tracking: CodeWhisperer comes equipped with a reference tracking feature, which is extremely useful when managing complex codebases or large projects.

• User-Friendly Interface: CodeWhisperer is very user-friendly. With just an email, you can sign up and start benefiting from this tool within minutes.

Pricing and Access

Amazon CodeWhisperer comes in two tiers: Individual and Professional. The Individual tier is free to use and offers code suggestions, reference tracking, and security scans. It includes up to 50 free code scans per user per month.

The Professional tier is available at $19 per user per month and offers additional administrative features like SSO and IAM Identity Center integration, policy control for referenced code suggestions, and higher security scanning limits.

CodeWhisperer supports numerous programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala. AWS also offers CodeWhisperer for free with AWS Cloud9, Amazon Lambda console, and Amazon SageMaker Studio.

Wrapping Up

AWS’s introduction of Amazon CodeWhisperer is an exciting development for all of us in the cloud engineering field. This tool’s potential to enhance productivity, promote secure and responsible coding, and provide real-time assistance within our IDEs makes it a powerful asset. Whether you’re an independent consultant or part of a larger team, CodeWhisperer is a tool worth exploring. Take advantage of experiencing the future of coding!