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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#591

Post by notsureaboutpg »

asdfman123 wrote: post #357
Joeri wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

Telling the computer what you want IS programming...

When a new language / framework / library comes around, GitHub copilot won't have any suggestions for when you write in it.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#592

Post by KingMachiavelli »

pvorb wrote: post #548
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…

I really wonder who those folks copy-pasting from Stack Overflow all day are. I only rarely find pieces of code that I can copy-paste. Typically Stack Overflow only gives me an idea of how to solve something, but incorporating that idea into my code base is still not trivial.

There is certainly a balance. When I want to implement feature X a client has requested but I have to deal with home grown database abstraction layers and custom AJAX API structures - I get the feeling that a third party library probably does it better and has more eyes on the code than exist at my company.

That said I would probably not look to a third party library to just to simple data transformation stuff. Probably the only thing I do copy almost verbatim from SO are things like Awk/Sed commands that are easy/low risk to test but would take hours to derive myself.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#593

Post by ulber »

qqqwerty wrote: post #451
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.

We went through the same hype cycle with self driving cars. We are now ~15 years out from the DARPA challenges and to date exactly 0 drivers have been replaced by AI. It is certainly impressive to see how much the GPT models have improved. But the devil is in the last 10%. If you can create an AI that writes perfectly functional python code, but that same AI does not know how to upgrade an EC2 instance when the appli…

Driving is qualitatively different from coding: an AI that's pretty good but messes up sometimes is vastly more useful for coding than for driving. In neither case can you let the AI "drive", but that's ok in coding as software engineering is already set up for that. Testing, pair programming and code reviews are popular ways to productively collaborate with junior developers.

You're not replacing the engineer, but you're giving every engineer a tireless companion typing suggestions faster than you ever could, to be filled in when you feel it's going to add value. My experience with the alpha was eye opening: this was the first time I've interacted with an AI and felt like its not just a toy, but actually contributing.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#595

Post by bovermyer »

Oh this would screw with me so badly.

A lot of the time, I'm thinking pretty deeply about the code I'm writing, and as I'm writing code I'll also be thinking about how it applies in context.

Having some external agent inject new code into my editor would shatter my thought flow, since I'd then have to grok whatever it just spit out instead of continuing on with whatever thought I was pursuing at the time.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#596

Post by stephen82 »

natfriedman wrote: post #345
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…

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…

> We expect that IP and AI will be an interesting policy discussion around the world in the coming years, and we're eager to participate!

Another question is this: let's hypothesize I work solo on a project; I have decided to enable Copilot and have reached a 50%-50% development with it after a period of time. One day the "hit by a bus" factor takes place; who owns the project after this incident?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#597

Post by visarga »

addicted wrote: post #411
Joeri wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, but AI isn't the same as automation. Automation is a force multiplier. AI is a cheaper way of doing what humans do. And the AI doesn't even need to be "true" AI. It simply needs to be able to do stuff better than what humans do.

> AI is a cheaper way of doing what humans do.

Like protein solving? /s

Re: GitHub Copilot

#598

Post by qaq »

spec-obs wrote: post #586
feross wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also been using the Alpha for around two weeks. I'm impressed by how GitHub Copilot seems to know exactly what I want to type next. Sometimes it even suggests code I was about to look up, such as a snippet to pick a random hex color or completing an array with all the common image mime-types. Copilot is particularly helpful when working on React components where it makes eerily accurate predictions. I see techno…

spot the Github PR folks!

They were replaced by GPT too :)

Re: GitHub Copilot

#599

Post by goodpoint »

gonehome wrote: post #496
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…

People have made some variation of this argument since the move from writing binary to writing assembly. With every new layer of abstraction there’s more power. The long term benefit of a tool that can do this well far exceeds what humans can do by hand, but that may not be true in the very short term. Either way, I suspect the benefits to be big.

Not at all: this tool does not encourage more powerful abstractions, but the very opposite.

It makes boilerplate cheaper to churn out.

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