Amazon Rebrands CodeWhisperer to Q Developer
Amazon announced that it has rebranded Amazon CodeWhisperer to Amazon Q Developer, with all existing features available under the new name.
Released in preview in 2023, Amazon Q Developer is Amazon’s generative AI-powered coding assistant. It provides in-line code suggestions, security scanning, and license tracking, among other capabilities. Amazon Q Developer grows with its users by applying the user’s existing codebase to respond to prompts in the most relevant way possible.
“CodeWhisperer is where we got started [with code generation], but we really wanted to have a brand – and name – that fit a wider set of use cases,” Doug Seven, GM and director of AI developer experiences at AWS, said. “You can think of Q Developer as the evolution of CodeWhisperer into something that’s much more broad.”
The announcement coincides with the general release of the Amazon Q Developer, including a number of enhancements and additional capabilities available in preview.
Currently in preview, Amazon Q Developer can access a user’s AWS account resources. The user can ask for a summary of their resources with natural language prompts. Q Developer will provide a list, description, and link to the identified resources without needing to navigate the AWS Management Console.
Also available in preview is the ability for users to better understand their cloud costs and receive insights into their spending. For example, users can ask for their top consuming services. Once Amazon Q Developer provides a summary, they can continue their analysis on the AWS Cost Explorer.
Included in the general release of Amazon Q Developer are new integrated development environment (IDE) extensions for Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs.
These IDEs include Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development and Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation. The first can help users develop new functions, with suggestions for new code and plans to develop, while the second can help users upgrade Java applications.
Amazon Q Developer has two versions available: a free version and Pro version for $19 per month.