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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#781

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?

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.

Generating the code with help from AI: 25 cents

Knowing what code to generate with the AI: 200k/yr

Re: GitHub Copilot

#783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I put a section in my LICENSE.txt prohibiting use as training data in commercial models, would that be sufficient to keep my code out of models like this?

Don't make your code public. Someone could read it and train the model in their brain to synthesize some code based on it. If its publicly available than its fair game to use it to learn and base ideas on.

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this results in more overall programmers or enabling existing programmers to make products quicker than before, it's a win! Most codebases already majorly contain unread code; the libraries (node_modules, etc). I am sure we can figure out a pattern to separate human vs machine code in similar way. If the code you are about to write is already written by someone else on the internet, that's probably not the most in…

> If this results in more overall programmers or enabling existing programmers to make products quicker than before, it's a win! I don't think I really agree with this sentiment. "More programmers" or "faster programmers" is meaningless (or even actively detrimental) if the quality of their output is lower. It's even worse if their output is plagued by subtle bugs, as AI systems are likely to produce.

The "quality programmers" (neckbeards) can continue their quality work. These new faster programmers can get other stuff done.

The one paying for these jobs can decide what level of quality they want, and hire/pay accordingly. How does that sound?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#785

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…

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

On the contrary. This tool increase the programmer productivity, hence you will get more salary not less.

You assumption is that programming demand is finite, AND that all programmers are equal, both of those are false.

I must also say that actual programming is around 10-15 % of the programmer job, so the tool will make you around 10% more overall productive.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#786
post #639
post #398

I don't think we need to start looking for new career paths yet. This example has a few bugs and it took me longer to track them down than it would have to write it myself: #!/bin/bash # List all python source files which are more than 1KB and contain the word "copilot". find . \ -name "*.py" \ -size +1000 \ -exec grep -n copilot {}\; "-exec grep -n copilot {}\;" needs to have a space before the semicolon otherwise f…

the main argument against Copilot for me. it takes longer to grok existing code than just write it from ground up.

Plus if you use this for anything non-trivial, it's functionally similar to using a third-party dependency, except the licensing terms are vague and there's no one to ask for help.

I could see it being useful maybe for testing. Even if it straight up copies code from the Linux kernel, you don't usually ship tests to customers so the GPL (probably) isn't a problem.

But the problem with testing is that you need to be 100% sure about how it behaves, and an AI generated test might not be reliable enough to be useful.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#787
Seeing my job get automated before my eyes makes me nervous but can AI make dumbass libertarian arguments over lunch? We’ll probably actually

Re: GitHub Copilot

#788
post #306

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…

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…

Jesus. From a guy with your track record that means a lot.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#789
post #354
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 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.

Automation makes product development cheaper lowering the barrier to use the automation.

50 years ago only largest companies could build something software, but every one person business have a website (and a part time engineer to develop it).

Re: GitHub Copilot

#790
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.

What is the hard boundary between you and your AI companion?

What happens when people think their "self driving" cars are more capable than they actually are? Many times, you are better off in a dumb car, because your expectations are such that you have to pay attention to a continuous stream of events and respond in a stateful manner.

If you try to bootstrap a holistic understanding of your problem in between bursts of auto-generated code, I don't think you are going to have a fantastic time of it.

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