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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#351

Post by croes »

fzaninotto wrote: post #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 na…

Maybe it's just because humans are not as creative as they think. Whatever you do, thousands of others have done the same already. So no need to pay a high level programmer, just a mediocre one and the right AI assistant gives the same results.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#352

Post by ImprobableTruth »

beeskneecaps wrote: post #9

Four years later: your AI replacement? When do you all predict something like this will happen?

Unless we achieve AGI this is never going to replace programming because it will instead just make programming a higher level task. And well, if we achieve AGI (which I think could be pretty soon), all jobs will replaced, so it's not something I think anybody should be worried about.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#353

Post by Kiro »

not2b wrote: post #71
dekhn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a model trained on text covered by a license is not itself covered by the license, unless it explicitly copies the text (you cannot copyright a "style").

But it actually is explicitly copying the text. That's how it works. The training data are massive, and you will get long strings of code that are pulled directly from that training data. It isn't giving you just the style. It may be mashing together several different code examples taking some text from each. That's called "derivative work".

No, that's not how it works.

"[...] the vast majority of the code that it suggests is uniquely generated and has never been seen before. We found that about 0.1% of the time, the suggestion may contain some snippets that are verbatim from the training set"

https://copilot.github.com/#faqs

Re: GitHub Copilot

#354

Post by croes »

Joeri wrote: post #343
asdfman123 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pack it all up, boys, programming's over. Hello, AI. Anyone want to hire me to teach your grandma how to use the internet?

Automation has always produced an increase in jobs so far, although sometimes in a disruptive way. I consider this like the switch from instruction-level programming to compiled languages, a level of abstraction added that buys a large increase in productivity and makes projects affordable that weren’t affordable before. If anything this will probably lead to a boom in development work. But there’s a bunch of low ski…

I think you are confusing correlation and causation. Not automation produces jobs, more people and more income for that people produces jobs, because more people means more demand.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#356

Post by shadowgovt »

ehsankia wrote: post #283
mdellavo wrote: post #193

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…

How is it different from the status quo of people just doing the wrong thing or copy pasting bad code? Yes there's the whole discussion below about float currency values, but I could very well see the opposite happening too, where this thing recommends better code that the person would've written otherwise.

It seems that copilot lets one cycle through options, which is an opportunity for it to facilitate programmers moving from a naive solution to one they hadn't thought of that is more correct.

(Unclear to me yet whether the design takes advantage of this opportunity)

Re: GitHub Copilot

#357

Post by asdfman123 »

Joeri wrote: post #343
asdfman123 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pack it all up, boys, programming's over. Hello, AI. Anyone want to hire me to teach your grandma how to use the internet?

Automation has always produced an increase in jobs so far, although sometimes in a disruptive way. I consider this like the switch from instruction-level programming to compiled languages, a level of abstraction added that buys a large increase in productivity and makes projects affordable that weren’t affordable before. If anything this will probably lead to a boom in development work. But there’s a bunch of low ski…

I feel like the inevitable path will be:

1) AI makes really good code completion to make juniors way more productive. Senior devs benefit as well.

2) AI gets so good that it becomes increasingly hard to get a job as a junior--you just need senior devs to supervise the AI. This creates a talent pipeline shortage and screws over generations that want to become devs, but we find ways to deal with it.

3) Another major advance hits and AI becomes so good that the long promised "no code" future comes within reach. The line between BA and programmer blurs until everyone's basically a BA, telling the computer what kind of code it wants.

The thing though that many fail to recognize about technology is that while advances like this happen, sometimes technology seems to stall for DECADES. (E.g. the AI winter happened, but we're finally out of it.)

Re: GitHub Copilot

#359

Post by croes »

blueblisters wrote: post #328
fzaninotto wrote: post #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 na…

With VSCode, Github and a perhaps a little bit of help from OpenAI, Microsoft is poised to dominate the developer productivity tools market in the near future. I wouldn't be surprised to see really good static analysis and automated code review tools coming out of these teams very soon.

And still Windows is a mess.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#360

Post by blondie9x »

If it's reducing keystrokes. Eventually it might reduce the problem down to no input needed at all.

In that case? Are those who don't control the AI needed? What about when those optimizations can be made by the AI itself also?

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