AWS re:Invent 2024 brought a wealth of exciting announcements, particularly for developers.
In this post, I share the three DevTools that stood out for me, which promise to facilitate serverless development, debugging, documenting, unit testing, and code reviews.

Read on to discover why these DevTools have me looking forward to an innovative 2025.

1. PowerTools for AWS Lambda (new features for TypeScript)#

If you’re working with serverless, chances are you have already used or are using PowerTools. At re:Invent, I spoke to the PowerTools developer team who were conducting a workshop for Python. They looped me in on new features that are not yet in the TypeScript implementation but are making their way in Q1, including:

• OpenAPI Spec Generation: This feature will simplify the process of documenting and integrating APIs by generating OpenAPI specifications directly from your code.
• Router: TypeScript will soon benefit from this feature to split routes that a Lambda function should handle, already available in the Python version. While I’ve traditionally been a fan of the micro-functions approach that breaks the routes into smaller Lambda functions, I’ve started exploring the advantages of Lambda monoliths in certain scenarios. I now look forward to testing the approach in TS.

2. AWS Toolkit for VSCode#

When I was in Dublin to speak at AWS Cloud Day, Dr. Stephen Howell mentioned his upcoming talk at re:Invent on the Developer’s Survival Kit (DEV205), and of course I couldn’t miss it. It was a fantastic talk on various developer tools, and the one that stood out for me was the AWS Toolkit for VSCode. It’s packed with features that facilitate serverless development, such as:

• Invoking Lambda Functions Locally: The toolkit allows you to pass test events directly through the IDE to invoke Lambda functions on AWS.
• Local Debugging for Serverless Applications: Using Docker, the toolkit creates a container that mimics the AWS Lambda runtime environment. This means you can set breakpoints, inspect variables, view the call stack, and step through your code—all locally.

3. Amazon Q Autonomous Agents for Unit Tests and Code Reviews#

I’m skeptical about this one. I was genuinely surprised during Matt Garman’s keynote when he categorized tasks like code reviews and test case creation as “undifferentiated” activities to be delegated to AI agents, as opposed to the “value-added activities” developers should focus on. I hold a different view: good reviews and a robust set of test cases are essential components of delivering value as a developer and decision-maker in the systems that are being built.

Contributing to this is the fact that developers often hold critical contextual knowledge — like user behavior, business roadmaps, stakeholder requests, and industry trends — that isn’t explicitly captured in the code itself. That is why, in my experience, high-quality code reviews and thoughtful test cases are non-trivial and non-negotiable for companies building innovative applications. But perhaps for other types of work, particularly where speed and scale are prioritized, these tasks are more like chores and could indeed be auto-generated.

It is an interesting discussion that might be too broad to characterize all industries under the same verdict. Regardless, I would still welcome an AI tool that could reliably assist with code reviews and test case generation, provided it meets my quality standards and I can easily review its outputs. Unfortunately, the tools I’ve tried so far have fallen short, producing either broken reviews or tests of little relevance. That said, I haven’t yet tried Amazon Q, so I’m optimistic that AWS might prove me wrong. This year, I’m planning to put it to the test.

Final Thoughts#

These are just a few of the DevTools I’m excited about as we enter 2025.
Hope they are also useful to you, and happy building!