When I first checked out AI coding assistants about two years ago, I was less than impressed, to say the least. Why automate stuff that is less than 10% of your day and is largely muscle memory anyway? Having used CodeWhisperer for some personal stuff recently, I gotta say I’m really impressed after all. The option+C in VSCode really is super-helpful, esp. in contexts where frameworks differ, change or just evolve quickly. The machine can read and copy faster than I ever could - and that’s what makes it quite handy.

So the short answer to the title is a resounding YES! CodeWhisperer is definitely useful. Even in ways I would not have thought. My learning here is: it’s not just about repetition (copy and paste is quite efficient there), it’s also about variation.

Let me explain the last part a little: the more often one of

  • projects
  • frameworks
  • framework flavors / versions
  • environments

change, the less every detail is in muscle memory already. And let’s face it: we won’t work on one codebase for 10 years (event 10 months is not a given). And even if it is the same codebase, we bring new stuff / new frameworks in. So something, inevitably always changes.

Which means sth, every week, is my first time. Reading up on all details is certainly slower than writing a comment and pressing option+C. Maybe it’s not perfect - but my very first attempt sure AF isn’t, either.

So, my argument here is quite simple: CodeWhisperer is super-useful, though not for what I initially thought.