Amazon CodeWhisperer: Your Free AI Coding Companion

Amazon CodeWhisperer: Your Free AI Coding Companion

The tech world is always buzzing with new developments, and one of the most exciting recent releases is Amazon Web Services’ Code Whisperer. For those not familiar with this new offering, Code Whisperer is an AI-powered coding assistant that suggests code snippets based on your natural language comments.

This is similar to GitHub’s Copilot, which has been making waves in the developer community since its launch. However, Code Whisperer comes with a significant advantage: it’s free for individual developers.

Why This Matters

First off, the cost factor can’t be ignored. GitHub’s Copilot costs money to use, which is a barrier for many developers. Those who don’t have the money to buy pricey tools, this is a big issue on its own.

Second, compared to Co-Pilot, Code Whisperer has a few unique characteristics. By providing references to the code in its training data when writing its code, for instance, it becomes more transparent and is less likely to copy code unintentionally. Additionally, it offers security scans that can examine smart contracts and look for OWASP concerns, like cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, in web apps.

What are the implications for developers?

Code Whisperer has the potential to be a game-changer for developers. Its massive foundational models allow developers to access large amounts of data they may not have had access to otherwise, making it possible to build highly customized AI applications.

For example, with as few as 20 labelled images uploaded to S3, developers can create image models that compete with industry standards. Additionally, based on inferential chips, AWS’s new ML training EC2 instances can train machine learning models at about 50% of the average cost of EC2.

Real-World Examples

Code Whisperer can help you complete your code more efficiently. Here are some real examples:

  • It suggests completing your styling code
  • It helps with complex logic and business requirements
  • It provides code completions for various programming languages

Conclusion

You might therefore be unsure of whether you ought to utilise it or whether it generates subpar code. The most crucial thing to remember is that Code Whisperer is still a newborn and needs development time. However, I believe it is already accomplishing more than enough compared to the competitors. Therefore, things will only get better with time.

For developers looking for a free alternative to GitHub’s Co-Pilot, the launch of Code Whisperer is welcome news. Code Whisperer can revolutionise the game by enabling developers to access vast volumes of data and create highly specialised AI applications thanks to big foundational models.

Developers can take advantage of Code Whisperer’s advantages for the time being while waiting to see where this new development tooling space race leads us in the future, as the legal ramifications of AI-generated code are still uncertain.