Getting Started with Amazon Q Developer Customizations

Summary

In this engaging video, the narrator recounts a tale of rapid learning and code validation with Amazon Q Developer. After purchasing a book on microservices, they were tasked with implementing a new persistence layer. Initially, their PR was rejected due to non-compliance with company guidelines. Leveraging Amazon Q Developer's customization feature, they trained it on the company's coding style, leading to a successful code submission. Developer advocate Ricardo Ferreira demonstrates how to customize Amazon Q Developer with specific codebases for tailored recommendations, showcasing its potential for new developers and open-source contributions.

Takeaways

• 📚 The video tells a story of a developer who had to quickly learn microservices with Spring Boot for a new task.
• 🛠️ The developer's task was to implement a new persistence layer for an entity called 'Orders' using best practices and Spring Boot's support.
• 🔍 To ensure adherence to coding standards, the developer used Amazon Q Developer for code validation and received feedback on company guidelines.
• 🚫 The initial PR was rejected due to non-compliance with company implementation guidelines, such as base class inheritance and logging framework usage.
• 🔄 The developer then utilized Amazon Q Developer's customization feature to align with the company's coding style, inspired by the Spring Petclinic sample application.
• 👋 Ricardo Ferreira introduces the Amazon Q Developer customization feature, which trains the tool on a specific codebase for tailored recommendations.
• 🔧 The customization feature is beneficial for new contributors to open source projects or developers working with proprietary APIs.
• 📝 The process involves preparing code samples, creating a customization in Amazon Q Developer, and associating it with users or groups for access.
• 🔗 The customization connects to code repositories or Amazon S3 buckets where the training code samples are stored.
• ⏱️ Training the customization on code samples takes time, ranging from minutes to over an hour, depending on the complexity.
• 📊 Amazon Q Developer provides a score to evaluate the quality of the code samples used for training, with scores ranging from 1 to 10.
• 🎯 After activation, the customization influences the recommendations and code generation provided by Amazon Q Developer, ensuring they align with the trained codebase.

Q & A

What was the main challenge the developer faced in the script?

The developer faced the challenge of having their pull request (PR) rejected because the code did not follow the company's implementation guidelines, despite being technically correct.

What is the purpose of the Amazon Q Developer tool mentioned in the script?

Amazon Q Developer is a tool that helps developers by providing code recommendations and validations based on known coding best practices, and it can be customized to adhere to specific coding styles or company guidelines.

What is the Amazon Q Developer customization feature?

The Amazon Q Developer customization feature allows developers to train the tool using a specific codebase so that future recommendations and code generations align with the practices and styles of that codebase.

How did the developer initially validate their code?

The developer initially used Amazon Q Developer to validate their code, ensuring it was implemented based on known coding best practices.

What was the feedback given by the reviewers on the developer's PR?

The reviewers noted that while the code was technically correct, it did not follow some of the company's implementation guidelines, such as inheriting from the right base class and using the correct logging framework.

What sample application did the reviewers recommend the developer study?

The reviewers recommended studying the Spring Petclinic sample application, which is where the company's implementation guidelines come from.

How can Amazon Q Developer be trained to understand a specific codebase?

Amazon Q Developer can be trained by providing it with code samples from the specific codebase, either by pulling the code directly from a repository like GitHub or by uploading the samples to Amazon S3.

What is the significance of the numeric score provided by Amazon Q Developer after training?

The numeric score indicates the quality of the code samples provided for training, with 1 to 3 being poor, 4 to 7 fair, and 8 to 10 very good, reflecting how well the tool has learned from the samples.

What steps are involved in setting up the Amazon Q Developer customization feature?

The steps include preparing code samples, creating customization in Amazon Q Developer, providing the URI of the S3 bucket or repository, activating the customization, and associating it with users or groups to make it available for them.

How does the developer ensure that the customization is available in their IDE?

The developer needs to ensure that the customization is activated and then associated with the user or group that the developer's IAM belongs to, allowing access to the customization within the IDE.

What was the result when the developer used the customization feature in Amazon Q Developer?

The developer received code recommendations that were more aligned with the company's guidelines, including extending the correct base entity and using the appropriate logging framework.