Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot

#551

Post by throwawayboise »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #415
anthropodie wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few days back, Sam Altman tweeted this "Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world. This is the opposite of what most people (including me) expected, and will have strange effects" And I was like yeah I gotta start preparing for next decade.

I think this will result in classic Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox . As the price of writing any individual function/feature goes down, the demand for software will go up exponentially. Think of how many smallish projects are just never started these days because "software engineers are too expensive". I don't think software engineers will get much cheaper, they'll just do a lot more.

> Think of how many smallish projects are just never started these days because "software engineers are too expensive".

Maybe many. If the cost/benefit equation doesn't work, it makes no sense to do the project.

> I don't think software engineers will get much cheaper, they'll just do a lot more.

If they do more for the same cost, they are cheaper. You as a developer will be earning less in relation to the value you create.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#552

Post by dxbydt »

How does this work in the context of leetcode/hackerrank interviews ? Can I just use the copilot to get a 90%?skeleton of the required solution and maybe fill in just the 10% smarts ?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#553

Post by JabavuAdams »

dennisy wrote: post #520
JabavuAdams wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only solve relatively small problems this way. As I get older, I like the physical act of programming less and less, and just want to solve problems so I can get going on all of my ideas backlog. I've been programming almost every day for the last 38 years. What I really want to do is solve (my) problems.

I really agree with this even though my experience is much smaller than yours. The biggest place I think it is frustrating to write code is for ML pipelines where you know what you need, but it takes a few hours to wrangle files and pandas until you can run your idea/experiment.

Ermahgerd, yes! Doing this right now.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#554

Post by king_magic »

stefano wrote: post #517
natfriedman wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general: (1) training ML systems on public data is fair use (2) the output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler. On the training question specifically, you can find OpenAI's position, as submitted to the USPTO here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R... We expect that IP and AI will be an interesting policy discussion around the world in the coming years, and we're eager to…

How do you guarantee it doesn't copy a GPL-ed function line-by-line?

I truly don't think they can guarantee that. Which is a massive concern.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#555

Post by b215826 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #512
inimino wrote: post #385

I'm amazed to see how positive the overall response is to this idea. Almost as if programmers think that writing programs is the worst part of the job and ready to be automated away. As someone more aligned with the Dijkstra perspective, this seems to me like one of the single worst ideas I've ever seen in this domain. We already have IDEs and other tools leading to an increase in boilerplate and the acceptance of it…

I think that there's a division between "productive" developers and "meticulous" developers. I know that I'm not the first one. My best days are when I'm removing code. I'm very wary from using frameworks and huge libraries. I learned few frameworks and libraries, I've chosen few that correspond to my style and I'm very careful when it comes to adapting new ones. I prefer to spend a week coding auth layer rather than…

I don't think you're unprofessional. In fact, your sentiment is a belief that was strongly held by early UNIX programmers. Two quotes I particularly like:

"The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code." -- Douglas McIllroy

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code." -- Ken Thompson

But unfortunately, we've come to a situation where SLOC and innovation for the sake of innovation is more important than code quality.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#556

Post by geraneum »

cunthorpe wrote: post #465
throwaway675309 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you say this, but you and most likely the majority of programmers rely on dozens of repositories, packages and libraries with likely zero deep understanding of it (and at the very least haven't read the source code of ) so I don't really understand the difference here. The advantage of something like this is that instead of having to go to stack overflow or any number of reference sites and copy pasta it can j…

Importing an external, tested, reliable dependency is completely different from anonymous non-checked untested code in your repository committed by someone who did not even read it. Check out the memoize example. That fails as soon as you pass anything non-primitive but there’s no one documenting that.

A programmer who commits untested sloppy code of their own writing, will do it regardless of having access to such a service. Nothing will make me commit the generated code without testing it. I think this tool could take care of the boilerplate and the rest will still be on the programmer. At least in the near future.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#557

Post by ipsum2 »

stefano wrote: post #517
natfriedman wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general: (1) training ML systems on public data is fair use (2) the output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler. On the training question specifically, you can find OpenAI's position, as submitted to the USPTO here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R... We expect that IP and AI will be an interesting policy discussion around the world in the coming years, and we're eager to…

How do you guarantee it doesn't copy a GPL-ed function line-by-line?

Yup, this isn't a theoretical concern, but a major practical one. GPT models are known for memorizing their training data: https://towardsdatascience.com/openai-gpt-leaking-your-data-...

Edit: Github mentions the issue here: https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio... and here: https://copilot.github.com/#faq-does-github-copilot-recite-c... though they neatly ignore the issue of licensing :)

Re: GitHub Copilot

#558

Post by drusepth »

itsoktocry wrote: post #366
anthropodie wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few days back, Sam Altman tweeted this "Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world. This is the opposite of what most people (including me) expected, and will have strange effects" And I was like yeah I gotta start preparing for next decade.

> Prediction: AI will cause the price of work that can happen in front of a computer to decrease much faster than the price of work that happens in the physical world. I'm skeptical. The envelope of "programming" will continue to shift as things get more and more complex. Your mother-in-law is not going to install Copilot and start knocking out web apps. Tools like this allow programmers to become more productive, wh…

I think the thought process is from the perspective of the employer, if you assume these two statements are true:

1) AI tools increase developer productivity, allowing projects to get completed faster; and

2) AI tools offset a nonzero amount of skill prerequisites, allowing developers to write "better" code, regardless of their skill level

With those in mind, it seems reasonable to conclude that the price to e.g. build an app or website will decrease, because it'll require either fewer man-hours 'til completion and/or less skill from the hired developers doing said work.

You do make a good point that "building an app" or "building a website" will likely shift in meaning to something more complex, wherein we get "better" outputs for the same amount of work/price though.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#559

Post by king_magic »

chuinard wrote: post #296
stefanos82 wrote: post #197

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…

Some of your questions aren't easy to answer. Maybe the first two were OK to ask. Others would probably require lawyers and maybe even courts to decide. This is a pretty cool new product just being shared on an online discussion forum. If you are serious about using it for a company, talk to your lawyers, get in touch with Github's people, and maybe hash out these very specific details on the side. Your comment came…

No, they are all entirely reasonable questions. Yeah, they might require lawyers to answer - tough shit. Understanding the legal landscape that ones' product lives in is part of a company's responsibility.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#560

Post by Spivak »

mdellavo wrote: post #463
throwaway675309 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you say this, but you and most likely the majority of programmers rely on dozens of repositories, packages and libraries with likely zero deep understanding of it (and at the very least haven't read the source code of ) so I don't really understand the difference here. The advantage of something like this is that instead of having to go to stack overflow or any number of reference sites and copy pasta it can j…

if you are typing out boilerplate you should look to abstract it away

Oh god please don't do this indiscriminately. If you're typing out boilerplate, document it and add a generator for it. I've been bitten probably hundreds of times by bad abstractions created to save some keystrokes that turned 50 lines of boring easily readable code into an ungrokable dense mess.
Post reply on HN