What is IBM Watsonx Code Assistant?
IBM Watsonx Code Assistant is an enterprise-focused generative AI tool designed to boost developer productivity and streamline the software development lifecycle. Built on IBM’s Granite foundation models, it integrates directly into popular IDEs like VS Code and Eclipse. The assistant provides developers with real-time code recommendations, generates new code from natural language prompts, and offers unique capabilities for modernizing legacy applications, such as converting COBOL to Java.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Code Generation: Generates code snippets and entire functions from natural language descriptions in multiple languages including Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript.
- Application Modernization: Specialized tools to translate legacy code, most notably COBOL, into modern languages like Java, helping enterprises update their critical systems.
- Code Explanation: Analyzes complex code blocks to provide clear, natural language summaries, making it easier for developers to understand and onboard onto existing projects.
- Automated Test Generation: Automatically creates unit tests for new or existing code, ensuring functionality and improving code quality.
- IDE Integration: Seamlessly integrates with Visual Studio Code and Eclipse, allowing developers to access its features without leaving their development environment.
Use Cases
- Accelerating New Development: Developers can write code faster by using natural language prompts to generate boilerplate code, complex algorithms, and data structures.
- Legacy System Modernization: Enterprises can significantly reduce the time and cost of modernizing mainframe applications by automatically converting COBOL codebases to Java.
- Onboarding and Training: New developers can get up to speed on complex projects more quickly by using the code explanation feature to understand existing logic.
- Improving Code Quality: By generating unit tests and providing refactoring suggestions, the tool helps maintain a high standard of code quality and reliability.
Getting Started
To start using IBM Watsonx Code Assistant, you can follow these general steps:
- Sign up for a Trial: Visit the official IBM Watsonx Code Assistant website and register for a free trial, which typically requires an IBM Cloud account.
- Get API Credentials: Once registered, navigate to your dashboard to generate an API key for authenticating the service.
- Install the IDE Extension: Search for and install the “Watsonx Code Assistant” extension from the marketplace in your IDE (e.g., VS Code or Eclipse).
- Configure the Extension: Enter your API key into the extension’s settings to connect it to your IBM Cloud account.
- Start Coding: You can now start using the assistant by writing comments to prompt code generation or right-clicking on code to access features like “Explain” or “Generate Test.”
```java
// Example: Using a natural language prompt in Java
// Create a Java function that takes a list of strings and returns a new list with duplicates removed
public List
Pricing
IBM Watsonx Code Assistant uses a freemium pricing model:
- Free Trial: A 30-day free trial is available, providing a limited number of tokens for developers to test the generative AI features.
- Essentials Plan: A pay-as-you-go plan designed for business and production use.
- Standard Plan: An enterprise-focused plan with a monthly subscription that includes a large number of task prompts and advanced Java application modernization capabilities.
- On-Premises: For organizations with strict data privacy requirements, an on-premises deployment option is also available.