Amazon recently disclosed that developers spend an average of just one hour per day coding. This finding was reported in an announcement that Amazon Q Developer can now document your code by automatically generating readme files and data-flow diagrams within your projects. 

As we have previously reported, Amazon Q Developer is a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant for software development that can be used from a range of tools including the AWS Management Console, through GitLab, and from IDEs. When it was originally launched in April 2024 its features included being able to write code in various programming languages, including Python, Java, and JavaScript and to debug and explain code and it has continued to expand its skillset.  

The most recent additions were reported in an AWS blog post this month with the title, Amazon Q Developer can now generate documentation within your source code and were introduced by this comment:

Today, developers report they spend an average of just one hour per day coding. They spend most of their time on tedious, undifferentiated tasks such as learning codebases, writing and reviewing documentation, testing, managing deployments, troubleshooting issues or finding and fixing vulnerabilities.

The blog post goes on to point out that it is these non-coding chores that Amazon Q Developer can help with by virtue of providing AI-powered assistance for designing, building, testing, deploying, and maintaining software. It reports on the latest skill, initiated using a new chat command:

/doc

which enables you to document your code by automatically generating readme files and data-flow diagrams within your projects. 

If this sounds too good be true you can test it out for free thanks for a Free Tier for Amazon Q Developer. The Pro Tier, which has higher limits for access to advanced features, plus additional enterprise-oriented features.  

Amazon Q Developer isn't the only AI-powered tool to help with documentation. Back in September, I reported on Cortex Click, describing it as:

a self-service, LLM-powered content generation platform designed produce high quality content for developer audiences including blog posts, tutorials, landing pages, and technical documentation, at unprecedented speed and scale.

Research into the most used AI-powered coding assistant, GitHub Pilot, suggests that it is welcomed by developers and is perceived to improve both productivity and job satisfaction by reducing the time spent on repetitive chores. Research also suggests that while novice programmers often rely on Copilot to generate entire code blocks or functions, sometimes without fully understanding the underlying concepts and therefore can hinder their learning, experienced programmers tend to use Copilot more strategically and in a way that enhances their productivity and creativity.

So the way to get more time in which to code is to embrace generative AI and allow it to take on some of the grunt work, including that of documentation.

More Information

Amazon Q Developer

Amazon Q Developer Pricing

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