The AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is a framework that enables developers to provision and manipulate AWS resources programmatically, using languages such as Python and TypeScript. It builds upon traditional means of managing infrastructure in code by greatly expanding the number of resources that can be manipulated through code. The CDK allows developers to deploy their entire cloud stack from a small set of programmatic structures, improving the quality and maintainability of their application's infrastructure. By moving configuration into code, organizations can streamline costs, reduce technical debt, and improve deployment efficiency. The AWS CDK also provides a way to migrate existing CloudFormation templates to a more flexible and readable format. Overall, the CDK is a powerful tool that empowers developers to manage infrastructure as they would any other element of their application's code.