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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

31–40 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot

#31
post #8

Should I be impressed that the example parse_expenses.py on the home page doesnt include any error handling and uses a float for currency? This seems like it's going to revolutionize copy and paste programming.

It's a copilot. You're still the pilot. To be honest this seems like it can definitely save me a bunch of googling and let me stay in the ide.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#32
post #22

IMO a potentially more interesting application of this technology would be a learning system that is able to learn your coding style. You give it access to the codebase and it reformats all files on save according to your likings, perfectly. Obviously a program that is able to write actual great code reliably would be spectacular, but we aren't there yet, I don't think Copilot presently is able to make me meaningfull…

Don't most IDEs handle this already?

There are no tools that can format my code with my coding style AFAIK. There are multiple tool that can format my code with their coding style though, which I don't care about.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now they just need to build this into vim.

Presumably, this will be accessible through a REST API or something like that at some point, so that it can eventually be integrated into all editors.

yep, the only thing I'm not quite sure about is how often it needs to call home. Presumably very often.. which runs counter to minimalism.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#36

So if it was trained using "source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." was it also GPLv2? So everything generated also GPLv2?

I seem to remember a similar discussion on Intellicode (similar thing, but more like Intellisense, and as Visual Studio plugin), which is trained on "github projects with more than 100 stars". IFIR they check the LICENSE.txt file in the project and ignore projects with an "incompatible" license. I don't have any links handy which would confirm this though.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#37
I wonder if there's any potential for Copilot to suggest malicious code because it's been trained on an open source projects containing intentionally malicious code.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#38
The IP implications of how network weights depend on their data sources is, shall we say, a matter of ongoing legal discussion.

We genuinely don’t know what it means for licenses or whatnot right now.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#40
I've been using the alpha for the past 2 weeks, and I'm blown away. Copilot guesses the exact code I want to write about one in ten times, and the rest of the time it suggests something rather good, or completely off. But when it guesses right, it feels like it's reading my mind.

It's really like pair programming, even though I'm coding alone. I have a better understanding of my own code, and I tend to give better names and descriptions to my methods. I write better code, documentation, and tests.

Copilot has made me a better programmer. No kidding. This is a huge achievement. Kudos to the GitHub Copilot team!

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