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GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

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Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#371

Post by josefx »

treesprite82 wrote: post #250
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…

> This means that Google was careful to not make a large amount of copy-righted works publically accessible. Such is not the case for GitHub Copilot in particular Armin Ronacher’s tweet [19] The fast inverse square root algorithm referenced here didn't originate from Quake and is in hundreds of repositories - many with permissive licenses like WTFPL and many including the same comments. It's not really a large amount…

>The fast inverse square root algorithm referenced here didn't originate from Quake and is in hundreds of repositories

With the exact same comments?

> many with permissive licenses like WTFPL

So it would be perfectly legal to do whatever I wanted with the source for GCC as long as there was a single fork on github that replaced the GPL with a MIT license? Quite sure the FSF would be perfectly fine with that.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#372

Post by sapphire_tomb »

baby wrote: post #289
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…

Did you try it? 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". It's night and day if you have it enabled or not. There's just no question about the value proposition once you start using it. I mean, you can tell comments here from people who have actually been using it, and people who have n…

There's so many people in here saying "did you try it?" - and I signed up on the waiting list the day it was announced and still don't have access.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#373

Post by baby »

blub wrote: post #361
wokwokwok wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That sounds about as useful as Tesla's "auto-pilot" - good when it works but you have to always pay attention that it's not trying to kill you (or your code in this case). A bad proposition for most people, because you can't trust it.

Sounds like you haven’t tried it :)

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#374

Post by arvindamirtaa »

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…

It's not so much the parts where think hard and implement that perfect feature. It's insanely useful when you have to make sweeping pesky changes.

Like a pulling values from a config dict and initializing a bunch of methods from the class? Or setting up a testcase similar to the one you already have, but with different values? Or cleaning values from a form? It's not a bulk edit. But it's also not thoughtful code-writing. It's monotonous and mundane. And lots of people do a lot of this on a daily basis.

Copilot makes this a cinch.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#375

Post by josefx »

sterlind wrote: post #169
bogwog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy only works if you designed/architected your own house.

copilot's won't suggest anything worth calling plagiarism, just mundane plumbing and maybe textbook algorithm implementations. have you seen it generate anything more glorified than StackOverflow-esque code snippets?

They had to blacklist Q_sort because they couldn't stop copilot from copying the complete function with comments (not just the algorithm) from the quake source, however it did not autocomplete the correct license for it.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#376

Post by arvindamirtaa »

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.

The only drawback is....constraints. Autocomplete constrains suggestions to those that are valid or at least valid-adjacent (like it'll use something but auto-import it to make it valid, etc). Copilot fails miserably here and I don't yet see it improving anytime soon. Maybe it will, and if it does, it'll be great. But I won't hold my breath for it.

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#377

Post by arvindamirtaa »

fnoof wrote: post #246
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…

I think professional software devs won’t get much value from copilot. OpenAI’s demo from a few months back showed it as a sort of bridge to convert natural language instructions into APIs calls. Eg converting “make all the headings bold” to calls to a word doc api.

It can still do that. Write a small comment before writing CSS and see it go!

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#378

Post by marceloabsousa »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #279

What this feels like to me, after a nominal amount of time using it, is that I am now in charge of vetting the proposed code, and is it appropriate for my use case, and does it meet our coding standards and does it integrate with my code or further suggestions. Honestly it feels like constantly code reviewing, which is not pleasant nor conducive to productivity. And I do a lot of PR approval, and I shudder to think a…

Totally agree. Co-pilot is just stressing more our roles as code reviewers. It’s not even a new idea - people working in program synthesis have done this for a while now. I’ve written about this a couple of years ago: https://medium.com/@marceloabsousa/the-software-shift-toward...

Re: GitHub Copilot available for JetBrains and Neovim

#380

Post by erikbye »

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…

> In terms of difficulty, writing code is maybe on average a two out of ten.

It's not about difficulty, but time. Not the same thing. Easy can still be time consuming.

Have you seen how much time the average developer spends on Stack Overflow and googling for answers?

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