Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments • Hacker News Board

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#101

Post by anyonecancode » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

I think copilot is solving the wrong problem. A future of programming where we're higher up the abstraction tree is absolutely something I want to see. I am taking advantage of that right now -- I'm a decently good programmer, in the sense that I can write useful, robust, reliable software, but I'm pretty high up the stack, working in languages like Java or even higher up the stack that free me from worrying about the fine details of memory allocation or the particular architecture of the hardware my code is running on.

Copilot is NOT a shift up the abstraction tree. Over the last few years, though, I've realized the the concept of typing is. Typed programming is becoming more popular and prominent beyond just traditional "typed" languages -- see TypeScript in JS land, Sorbet in Ruby, type hinting in Python, etc. This is where I can see the future of programming being realized. An expressive type system lets you encode valid data and even valid logic so that the "building blocks" of your program are now bigger and more abstract and reliable. Declarative "parse don't validate"[1] is where we're eventually headed, IMO.

An AI that can help us to both _create_ new, useful types, and then help us _choose_ the best type, would be super helpful. I believe that's beyond the current abilities of AI, but can imagine that in the future. And that would be amazing, as it would then truly be moving us up the abstraction tree in the same way that, for instance, garbage collection has done.

[1] https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-va...

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#102

Post by goodpoint » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

klohto wrote: post #14

I’m really dumbfounded by the Copilot team decision to not exclude GPL licensed code. Why was this direction chosen? Is the inclusion of GPL really worth the risk and potential Google v. Oracle lawsuit? I’d like to know the reasoning.

Apache / MIT / BSD all have restrictions e.g. attribution clause.

Excluding GPL does not solve the problem.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#103

Post by mimixco » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #76

mimixco wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome summary and thanks for trying it for the rest of us! Copilot sounded terrible in the press release. The idea that a computer is going to pick the right code for you (from comments, no less) is really just completely nuts. The belief that it could be better than human-picked code is really way off. You bring up a really important point. When you use a tool like Copilot (or copypasta of any kind), you are intro…

Hm odd takes here. It's really weird for software engineers to judge something by its current state and not by its potential state. To me, it's clearly solvable by Copilot filtering the input code by that repository's license. It should only be certain open source licenses, maybe even user-choosable, or code-creators can optionally sublicense their code to Copilot in a very permissable way. Secondly, a way for the cr…

I've been in the business a long time and I just don't believe in generalized AI at all. Writing code requires general (not artificial) intelligence. All of these "code helping" tools break down quickly because they may be searching for and finding relevant code blocks (the "imperative hell" referred to by another commenter), but they don't understand the context or the overall behavior and goals of the program.

Writing to overall goals and debugging actual behavior are the real work of programmers. Coming up with syntax or algorithms are 3rd and 4th on the priority list because, lets face it, it's not that hard to find a reference for correct syntax or the overall recipe implied by an algorithm. Once you understand those, you can write the correct code for your project.

I do think Copilot has potential as a search engine and reference tool -- if it can be presented that way. But the idea of a computer actually coming up with the right code in the full context of the program seems like fantasy.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#104

Post by ronnier » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

gentleman11 wrote: post #94

tyingq wrote: post #30

They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/ One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884 The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context. The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bom…

> The python example is using floats for currency. Dumb question, but what is the proper way to handle currency? Custom number objects? Strings for any number of decimal places?

In its base unit. So cents in USD. Which can be an int64

Or if your language has something specific built in, use that.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#105

Post by rjknight » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #30

They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/ One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884 The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context. The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bom…

> This product seems like it needs some more thought. Maybe a way to comment, flag, or otherwise call out bad output?

Wait for your colleagues to use it, fix the bad code in the pull request, and wait for copilot to learn from the new training data you just provided!

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#106

Post by pydry » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #87

tyingq wrote: post #30

They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/ One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884 The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context. The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bom…

> And these are the hand picked examples. This product seems like it needs some more thought. Everyone's self-preservation instincts kicking in to attack Copilot is kinda amusing to watch. Copilot is not supposed to produce excellent code. It's not even supposed to produce final code, period. It produces suggestions to speed you up, and it's on you to weed out stupid shit, which is INEVITABLE. As a side note, Excel a…

It's true I probably wouldnt have laughed quite as loudly if there werent a chorus of smug economists telling us that tools like this are gonna put me out of a job.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#107

Post by slver » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

volta83 wrote: post #100

slver wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And these are the hand picked examples. This product seems like it needs some more thought. Everyone's self-preservation instincts kicking in to attack Copilot is kinda amusing to watch. Copilot is not supposed to produce excellent code. It's not even supposed to produce final code, period. It produces suggestions to speed you up, and it's on you to weed out stupid shit, which is INEVITABLE. As a side note, Excel a…

So how do you know if the code that Copilot regurgitates is almost a 1:1 verbatim copy of some GPL'ed code or not ? Because if you don't realize this, you might be introducing GPL'ed code into your propiertary code base, and that might end up forcing you to distribute all of the other code in that code base as GPL'ed code as well. Like, I get that Copilot is really cool, and that software engineers like to use the la…

It's very easy: don't use copilot code verbatim, and you won't have GPL code verbatim.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#108

Post by j-pb » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #87

tyingq wrote: post #30

They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/ One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884 The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context. The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bom…

> And these are the hand picked examples. This product seems like it needs some more thought. Everyone's self-preservation instincts kicking in to attack Copilot is kinda amusing to watch. Copilot is not supposed to produce excellent code. It's not even supposed to produce final code, period. It produces suggestions to speed you up, and it's on you to weed out stupid shit, which is INEVITABLE. As a side note, Excel a…

If I want random garbage in my codebase that I have to fix anyways I might as well hire a underpaid intern/junior.

It's easier to write correct code than to fix buggy code. For the former you have to understand the problem, for the latter you have to understand the problem, and a slightly off interpretation of it.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#109

Post by slver » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #97

slver wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And these are the hand picked examples. This product seems like it needs some more thought. Everyone's self-preservation instincts kicking in to attack Copilot is kinda amusing to watch. Copilot is not supposed to produce excellent code. It's not even supposed to produce final code, period. It produces suggestions to speed you up, and it's on you to weed out stupid shit, which is INEVITABLE. As a side note, Excel a…

Have you met programmers? Even those who care about quality are often under a lot of pressure to produce. Things slip through. Before, it was verbatim copies from Stack Overflow. Now it'll be using Copilot code as-is.

So, nothing new, is your point?

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#110

Post by School-Cotton » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

gentleman11 wrote: post #94

tyingq wrote: post #30

They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/ One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884 The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context. The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bom…

> The python example is using floats for currency. Dumb question, but what is the proper way to handle currency? Custom number objects? Strings for any number of decimal places?

Depends what you’re doing. In fact it’s not always wrong to use floats for currency. For accounting you should probably use a fixed-precision decimal type.