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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot

#251
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this attitude (dismissing the feature even without trying it out) comes across as insecurity and gatekeeping.

Nope, it's called wisdom. Not everyone on here is under 12.

There's that insecurity thing he was talking about.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#252
post #174
post #88

Calling it now, there will be a "Copilot considered harmful" post. If you need to go through the suggested code to ensure it's correct, you may as well write it yourself? If you glance at it and it looks about right, you can potentially overlook bugs or edge cases, you'll lose confidence in your own code since you didn't properly conceptualise it yourself. Potentially for newer developers it robs them of active exper…

Honestly, this attitude (dismissing the feature even without trying it out) comes across as insecurity and gatekeeping.

Is “you’re gatekeeping!” the new “first comment!”? I fail to see the information gain from adding this message to every thread.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#253

I remember another company called Kite [1], working on a similar approach - smart autocompletion - this however uses GPT-3 so it's a bit different I guess because it doesn't detect what you're trying to do but rather transforms technical natural language into code. Right? [1] https://www.kite.com

Github sources suggestions from OS projects. There have been AI completion tools that upload your code, basically spyware. Definitely check thoroughly if that’s the case!

Re: GitHub Copilot

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

You should read the FAQ at the bottom of the page; I think it answers all of your questions: https://copilot.github.com/#faqs

This page has a looping back button hijack for me

Re: GitHub Copilot

#255
We already do this with libraries and frameworks in a more primitive way. The hard work is actually done by a hand full of programmers, everyone else is sticking pipes together. I don't think that's a bad thing per se, but in my experience most people don't make the distinction. You're not going to be able to write your own database server with this tool if you weren't able to do so without it. If you're one of the few programmers that are able to build a database, a graphics engine, a compiler etc. you're fine. Everyone else should probably feel a mild panic. You'll be automated away in a couple of AI generations.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading.

> How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? How many? > I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading. This is not correct. A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different than a tool (AI bot) replacing a human (developer). Regardless, this is the Lump of Labour fallacy ( https://en.wikip…

> A human (developer) displacing another human (business person) is entirely different

That's not what is happening though, a few developers replace thousands of business and industry people with automated tools. Say, automated route planning for package delivery, would take many thousands of humans if not for the AI bots that do the job instead.

> SWE is a complex field, way more than typing a few routines. In best case (technologically speaking) this will be an augmentation.

Of course there will always be some jobs for humans to do. Just like there are still jobs for humans loading thread into the automated looms and such.

But your arguments against automation displacing programming jobs ring hollow. People said the same thing about chess playing programs, they would never be able to understand the subtlety or complexity like a human could.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#257
As a programmer who specializes in security, I worry that many of the common errors that people make will get picked up the AI and recommended to new users. It looks like it gets reinforcement from the code that the user selects. In my experience the majority of developers make security errors, so how is the algorithm going to learn not to do it the wrong way when it's learning from bad code and getting reinforced by developers who are wrong? (This is an honest question, not a criticism. I think this product is fascinating)

Re: GitHub Copilot

#258
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about this being overall detrimental to code quality as it allows people to just blindly accept completions without really understanding the generated code. Similar to copy-and-paste coding. The first example parse_expenses.py uses a float for currency - that seems to be a pretty big error that's being overlooked along with other minor issues around no error handling. I would say the quality of the…

Why would you say it's an error to use a float for currency? I would imagine it's better to use a float for calculations then round when you need to report a value rather than accumulate a bunch of rounding errors while doing computations.

Using float for currency calculations is how you accumulate a bunch of rounding errors. Standard practice when dealing with money is to use an arbitrary-precision numerical type.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#259
Wow, that's incredible! Any chance we'll get a downloadable and editable open source version of this so we can play around with it, train it on smaller own datasets and generally experiment? It sounds super exciting!
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