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GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

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Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#341

Post by [deleted] »

pizza wrote: post #326
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…

The value prop for things like these is always the same: for the widely - and accurately, although that's irrelevant to my point - lambasted initial release to start the ten year journey down the road towards the creation of an eventual product that will make people link to comments like these the way they link to the original Dropbox Show HN: post. There are levels of ease of which we have not yet dreamed, especiall…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#342

Post by anigbrowl »

matsemann wrote: post #119
gfosco wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise skeptical, but I have been super impressed with it. I just got in to the technical preview, and worked through a specific task I needed to do (involving mongoose, a mongo aggregate query, a few loops, some date functions) and started by adding a comment above each line. It helped a lot actually, felt like a collab. I'll reproduce a generic example I sent a friend. Prompt: const redis = require('redis'); // C…

// Create a redis client Writing that probably takes a longer time than just doing it with the IDE help in jetbrains, though? Press "r", press "." to autocomplete so it now says "redis.", then write "cC" and it suggests createClient (or write "create" or "client" if you're not sure what you're looking for). Now it says "redis.createClient()". Press ctrl+alt+v to extract a variable or write ".const" and press tab to a…

The power of something like Copilot is in building out stuff you're not familiar with or don't have templates set up. It's probably not as helpful when you already have a clear idea of what you want to do and just need it rather than think about it.

+1 for the variable extraction thing, I've been using their IDE for ages and it never occurred to me to look for such a thing.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#343

Post by foolfoolz »

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…

maintaining code someone else wrote is much higher on your rating scale. probably need the top end. because it nearly always involves some debugging and usually is not obvious what footguns exist

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#344

Post by ranguna »

wokwokwok wrote: post #313
b215826 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because I've been using it for weeks and it makes me read these types of comments as "I don't understand the value of the internet" or "what's the purpose of owning a phone". And yet apart from making this very inaccurate comparison you haven't made any argument for why such a thing as Copilot would be useful to anyone. How do you personally find Copilot useful? And why do you think someone whose job demands more t…

> The onus is on you to convince the skeptics. Is it? Look, I don't care at all if you use copilot; you can use notepad to write your code if that floats your boat; do whatever you want. What the parent post said is: Copilot is useful; it helps you write code with autocomplete suggestions. If you think that you don't get productivity gains from an IDE or you're in the 'no IDE makes you more hardcore and better progra…

> Well, it's free to use right now....

From copilot "additional telemetry"

> If you use GitHub Copilot, the GitHub Copilot extension/plugin will collect usage information about events generated by interacting with the integrated development environment (IDE). These events include GitHub Copilot performance, features used, and suggestions accepted, modified and accepted, or dismissed. This information may include personal data, including your User Personal Information

So, not really free is it?

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#345

Post by nerdwaller »

danachow wrote: post #322
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?"…

That code is unadulterated garbage

But what if I told you I wrote it fast?

… as a top level comment said, this is optimizing for the wrong problem.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#346

Post by zohch »

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…

To make it faster to pump out go which is maybe > 50 noise with it's poor language features and it's anemic standard library that does not even have abs.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#347

Post by ghoward »

Gigachad wrote: post #337
ghoward wrote: post #201

I have many thoughts about Copilot, but here are two. First, as much as I don't like the idea of Copilot, it seems to be good for boilerplate code. However, the fact that boilerplate code exists is not because of some natural limitation of code; it exists because our programming languages are subpar at making good abstractions. Here's an example: in Go, there is a lot of `if err == nil` error-handling boilerplate. Ru…

The boilerplate often exists because removing it requires assumptions and guesses. The language should never guess, copilot has the benefit of being able to give you wrong answers sometimes and you get to decide if they are correct.

I have no idea of what you are trying to say.

By definition, boilerplate is code that is repetitive. That repetition should be minimized by the programming language. If there are assumptions and guesses, that's because there's less repetition than you think.

I am talking about eliminating repetition, not code with differing assumptions.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#348

Post by gavinhoward »

anigbrowl wrote: post #332
ghoward wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that completely ignores the fact that a court just basically said that a machine cannot invent, which is a small step away from saying a machine cannot copyright, which would mean that Copilot is not transformative. The copyright case you cited involves humans. We are talking about machines.

Copilot is used by human programmers. It's not cloning entire programs, little bits of programs that are curated and assembled into something new are easily going to past the test of transformativity. You go into court with that argument, and the other side will just point out that you have no way of showing the entire program you're complaining about was written by machine. You seem to be arguing that if it includes…

I'm sorry, but I think you have not thought my argument through.

First, I'm well aware that a whole program is not an infringement. It doesn't have to be for there to be infringement by some piece of code in the program, which would be what I was arguing.

When I go into court, what I will say is, "This piece of code infringes, here is my original." The court will rule on whether that piece infringes.

At that point, I have not argued at all about machines, and I don't have to. All I have to do is argue that the code infringes because then, if I win, the company or entity that is infringing on my code has some options:

1) They can claim it came from Copilot, and thus, that they are not at fault, at which point the court will laugh them out of court, as you say, and I collect my damages.

2) They can sue Microsoft for stripping the license from the code and making them unable to find the provenance of the code, and I still collect my damages.

If Microsoft is successfully sued, they will have to ensure Copilot does not strip licenses and gives the programmer information about where the code came from. That would be a win for me because all I want is for my code to be used according to the licenses.

If Microsoft is not successfully sued, then companies will realize that using Copilot is a bad idea because they could be held liable for code that they do not know the provenance of, which is a bad business risk, one which companies will not take, even big companies like Google, which does not use any AGPL code.

Regardless of which option they choose, that initial victory for me in court means that companies now know that using Copilot can lead them into a copyright minefield unless licenses are passed through, so I win against Copilot without ever arguing against it in court.

tl;dr: I'm not going to be directly suing Microsoft. Instead, I'm going to exercise my rights under copyright and my licenses as I should and let the dominoes fall toward making Copilot a dead product.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#349

Post by bostik »

chii wrote: post #232
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…

> value proposition for Copilot. now, instead of copying off stackoverflow, it's gonna be off copilot. It will enable a lot more people to code who otherwise would not. Whether this is a good outcome or not...

And you'll get the same "works for me" results as you would from SO. I put my thoughts down a while back: https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/minimum-viable-copy...

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#350

Post by baby »

nrabulinski wrote: post #303
baby wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment hides some truth! Imagine coding today without stackoverflow. Possible, but you'd lose so much time looking for simple answers.

The more experience I gain the less I use SO and more I just go to the sources or read the docs. With googling for SO answers I have to parse the question, find a modern answer (because the accepted one is 10 years old and won’t work), parse that and adapt it to my problem. With documentation I just search for what I need and go straight to solving my problem and I’ve never felt more productive. I feel like people ne…

I feel like jobs where you can constantly rely on your already acrued knowledge are rare. Or maybe it’s just me and I work in fields where I have to learn new technologies constantly?

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of OCaml and it’s been tough as there’s very little on stackoverflow. Every time I have a question I have to spend a lot of effort looking for the answer instead of relying on someone before me having the same problem and posting the answer online.

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