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GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

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Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#251

Post by thereisnospork »

mewse wrote: post #213

I’ve never understood the value proposition for Copilot. In terms of difficulty, writing code is maybe on average a two out of ten. On average, maintaining code you wrote recently is probably a three out of ten in terms of difficulty, and maintaining code somebody else wrote or code from a long time ago probably rises to around a five out of ten. Debugging misbehaving code is probably a seven out of ten or higher. Gi…

>GitHub Copilot is optimising the part of the process that was already the easiest, and makes the other parts harder because it moves you from the “I wrote this” path to the “somebody else wrote this” path.

It is worth mentioning, I suppose, that from Copilot's point of view it is the inverse. Maybe a necessary or at least desirable step towards the inevitable 'Copilot debugger'.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#253

Post by nerdwaller »

pugets wrote: post #76

Copilot is crazy. The other day, I was writing a Python function that would call a Wikipedia API. I pulled from the internet an example of a GET request, and pasted it as a comment in my code. # sample call: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&list=geosearch&gscoord=37.7891838%7C-122.4033522&gsradius=10000&gslimit=100 Then I defined a variable, base_url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?"…

In a way it is impressive codepilot knew how to separate the query string while still being correct. However this is a fairly naive way to build a url that I wouldn't encourage committing. If I saw this in code in a review I would recommend using a dict and `urlencode` or one of the various other URL builders available (either in the stdlib or through another library like `yarl`/etc.).

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#255

Post by superdisk »

baby wrote: post #74

I’ve been using this for weeks and it blooooows my mind. It comes up with crazy recommendations, just yesterday I wrote this big ass logic to do something, then I wanted to move that code to a function so I wrote the function name and I kid you not copilot suggested a one-liner that worked… the thing is so useful and I’m not writing simple code (writing cryptographic code). And when it’s not doing that at the very le…

> writing cryptographic code

Delegating the implementation of something that you are notoriously never supposed to roll your own, to a text generator AI.... What could possibly go wrong?

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#257

Post by knowledge-clay »

abecedarius wrote: post #245
knowledge-clay wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world of difference between what Copilot does and what an engineer does. Imagine reading a design document for a feature and implementing that on a large, years-old codebase, ie, what many engineers do on a daily basis. Copilot isn't even 1 millionth of the way to even beginning to solve that problem, it would require human-level AGI with the capability of understanding human cultural and institutional con…

I'm not so confident this is really different from how a pro Go player would react 10 years ago to the analogous question. Put it this way: in 5 years will there be an AI that's better than 90% of unassisted working programmers at solving new leetcode-type coding interview questions posed in natural language? Arranging an actual bet is too annoying, but that development in that timeframe doesn't seem unlikely. It mig…

> I'm not so confident this is really different from how a pro Go player would react 10 years ago to the analogous question.

Yes, and there were people in the 1960s who thought computers of the time were only a decade away from being smarter than humans. The question is one of category -- Go is something that a computer could conceivably be better than a human being at. There were certainly Go programs better than some human beings at that time. "Reading a human language document, communicating with stakeholders to understand the requirements in human language, understanding the business requirements of a large codebase, and writing human-readable code" is so categorically different than what Copilot does that, and something that no computer is currently capable of. If such a thing is even possible, we haven't even begun to tackle it.

> in 5 years will there be an AI that's better than 90% of unassisted working programmers at solving new leetcode-type coding interview questions posed in natural language?

I think that's highly unlikely, but it is within the bounds of possibility given what we know about AI currently (and probably, like GPT, it will only work under specific constraints). But the gap between that and what an engineer does on a daily basis is enormous.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#258

Post by rectang »

TheDong wrote: post #239
rectang wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that downstream users who redistribute copyrighted code regurgitated by Copilot are in violation of copyright. It doesn't seem to me as though the distinction between "Copilot reproduced the code and the engineer copy/pasted/saved it" versus "Copilot inserted the code" is crucial. There's a separate question about Microsoft's own liability. When Copilot reproduces open source code without adhering to the ter…

> It doesn't seem to me as though the distinction between "Copilot reproduced the code and the engineer copy/pasted/saved it" versus "Copilot inserted the code" is crucial. I think that could be crucial. If I read a computer science book, and from that produce a unique piece of code which was not present in the book, I have created a new work which I hold copyright over. If I train a machine learning algorithm on a c…

The way I'm reading your reply seems like sophistry, so I expect I'm misunderstanding you.

Scenario 1: Copilot, operating as an IDE plugin, placed the suggestion directly into the text. To accept the suggestion, the engineer hit save.

Scenario 2: Copilot, placed its suggestion in an external file. The engineer copy/pasted the suggestion verbatim into their IDE, then hit save.

These don't seem as though they materially affect the situation. Regardless, the downstream user who somehow brought the copyrighted code into their codebase (which they subsequently redistribute) is infringing.

This theoretical case where Copilot is not involved and the user synthesizes something on their own is not germane. Copilot is involved.

What are you folks getting at? That Microsoft is in the clear? That the end user is in the clear? That "I'm just making suggestions" is akin to "I'm just asking questions" and absolves the suggester of liability? I don't get it.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#260

Post by JohnAaronNelson »

liquidwax wrote: post #234
mewse wrote: post #213

I’ve never understood the value proposition for Copilot. In terms of difficulty, writing code is maybe on average a two out of ten. On average, maintaining code you wrote recently is probably a three out of ten in terms of difficulty, and maintaining code somebody else wrote or code from a long time ago probably rises to around a five out of ten. Debugging misbehaving code is probably a seven out of ten or higher. Gi…

Copilot also optimizes for speed to a degree. It's akin to advanced auto complete. IntelliJ auto-completion is great. As much as it pains to say this, I don't think I will be as effective writing Java in Vim as much as I am with IntelliJ. The key differentiator is the auto complete speed. Copilot I feel is just auto complete on steroids. It may not be perfect yet, but there is definitely a problem it solves.

Have you used it? My experience was quite atrocious. Copilot is not auto complete. It’s nonsense. I attempted to use it continuously for three weeks. I tried because I know someone who built it and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It never prompted me with any code that was useful. It only ever slowed me down and caused me frustration. It’s nothing like Intellisense. It’s just trash.

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