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GitHub Copilot Labs

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Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#51

Post by pydry »

armchairhacker wrote: post #14

when i first used copilot i thought it wasn’t very useful. But as i’ve used it more i realize it helps a lot. A surprising amount of code is just boilerplate, e.g. a single if-statement is 3 lines but you’re not going to abstract all your if statements, so you write similar if statements over and over again. It especially helps when i’m programming in a language or library i’m not familiar with, because i don’t quite…

This is exactly what concerns me about copilot. Reducing the barrier to writing boilerplate will make sure a lot more of it is written. Copilot will probably have a tendency to balloon SLOC as its autocomplete means adding an extra 35 lines is just a click away.

Of course not everybody will use it this way and responsibly used it'll be fine yadda yadda yadda but it is going to shape developer behavior - most especially for developers being a bit lazy (which is all of us sometimes and some of us all of the time).

Also, SLOC implies productivity, which will put a damper on people's reluctance to just add those 35 lines.

Somebody is going to have to dig through all of that code one day looking for obscure bugs. I suspect difficulty in finding bugs is correlated to the square of SLOC (as opposed to writing which is probably closer to linear) so on the other end of the code lifecycle copilot could end up being a masssive false economy.

This could be mitigated by extra vigilant code reviews but I've noticed that vigiliance in code reviews is inversely correlated to PR length (theres a cartoon about this somewhere), so I'm slightly pessimistic it'll stem the boilerplate tsunami.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#52

Post by ricwo »

Hello! I'm one of the founders of https://cogram.com, a coding assistant for data scientists and ML practitioners. Cogram brings Copilot-like features to Jupyter Notebook.

You can use Cogram by writing ordinary code (and Cogram will complete it), or by writing comments (in which case Cogram completes the code that matches the comment). We've also launched a web app that generates SQL statements from descriptions in simple language.

We're just starting out and would love it if you could try it out, give feedback, and spread the word if you like. It doesn't cost anything -- we have a generous free tier (1000 completions / month).

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#53

Post by eltercero »

I've been using Copilot these past days and it's kind of mindblowing. I was doing some Rails tests, and after writing the factories it suggested me the exact right expectations. Did not expect that, kind of scary. Same for suggesting while commenting code. Wtf.

I'd love to keep using it, but I'm way too familiarized with Sublime Text to change now (and I tried to customize VsCode). I know it's a long shot, but it'd be great if they release an extension for Sublime.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#54

Post by nefitty »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #50
nefitty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are open versions of GPT so presumably, one could train an open version of Codex. It would be really terrible if Codex was made inaccessible to swaths of people in the name of commercial interests.

GitHub sent OpenAI something like 57 terabytes of data from GitHub. Good luck scraping that. (I helped build The Pile, the largest openly-available text dataset.) You're right that you theoretically can do this, but doing it in practice requires either funding or time.

Yeah, I thought of mentioning that but wasn't sure how in the weeds anyone would want to go lol Besides, I'm optimistic about what an enterprising individual is capable of when faced with those sorts of limits... It's those clear bounds that set creativity free.

By the way, I'm so fucking stoked that Shawn Presser of The Pile responded to me. Your work is proto-solarpunk incarnate. Really amazing contributions dude, can't wait to see what's next.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#55

Post by yosito »

paxys wrote: post #18
lucasmullens wrote: post #9

What's the use-case for this? Hopefully not for commenting code. This only seems to be able to explain syntax, which seems pretty useless for anyone who isn't new to the language they're using. Am I missing something?

The use case is exactly what is stated on the box. You select a bit of code in a language/syntax that may be unfamiliar to you, and it tries to explain it better in English.

The point of code comments isn't to explain what the code does, unless you're writing a tutorial. The point is usually to explain the intention of the author. If a person knows the language, they don't need an explanation of what the code does.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#56

Post by baby »

vermilingua wrote: post #43
baby wrote: post #41

I’m currently working on a custom, state of the art zero-knowledge proof smart contract framework, and as I’m writing circuits using it Copilot correctly suggests an insane number of lines to me. It feels like I’m cheating.

Perhaps your framework is not as state-of-the-art as you believe?

I’ll take the bait. What makes you say that?

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#57

Post by sillysaurusx »

nefitty wrote: post #54
sillysaurusx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub sent OpenAI something like 57 terabytes of data from GitHub. Good luck scraping that. (I helped build The Pile, the largest openly-available text dataset.) You're right that you theoretically can do this, but doing it in practice requires either funding or time.

Yeah, I thought of mentioning that but wasn't sure how in the weeds anyone would want to go lol Besides, I'm optimistic about what an enterprising individual is capable of when faced with those sorts of limits... It's those clear bounds that set creativity free. By the way, I'm so fucking stoked that Shawn Presser of The Pile responded to me. Your work is proto-solarpunk incarnate. Really amazing contributions dude,…

I'm really happy to hear that. Thank you.

When I started out, I only wanted to make some small contribution somewhere. It's really surreal that there are people rooting for me now. I'll do my best to continue to contribute in ways that I can.

You can too, by the way. There's not a lot of difference between me and you. I believe in you.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#58

Post by nefitty »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #57
nefitty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought of mentioning that but wasn't sure how in the weeds anyone would want to go lol Besides, I'm optimistic about what an enterprising individual is capable of when faced with those sorts of limits... It's those clear bounds that set creativity free. By the way, I'm so fucking stoked that Shawn Presser of The Pile responded to me. Your work is proto-solarpunk incarnate. Really amazing contributions dude,…

I'm really happy to hear that. Thank you. When I started out, I only wanted to make some small contribution somewhere. It's really surreal that there are people rooting for me now. I'll do my best to continue to contribute in ways that I can. You can too, by the way. There's not a lot of difference between me and you. I believe in you.

I was literally sitting here trying to stop the waves of sadness I'm feeling from not meeting my own expectations. Bumping into a kindred spirit that's getting shit done really helps. Thank you for the nudge.

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#59

Post by barrenko »

codeenlightener wrote: post #23

Hello! I'm the founder of https://denigma.app , an AI that explains code. It's available now, with a free demo and VS Code extension, with an Emacs extension coming soon. Denigma is a product that has been around for a while. Denigma goes beyond a literal line by line explanation, and explains of programming concepts and deduces the business logic and goal of code. I'm excited to see innovation in the field. Here's a…

Loving this!

Re: GitHub Copilot Labs

#60

Post by Zababa »

pydry wrote: post #51
armchairhacker wrote: post #14

when i first used copilot i thought it wasn’t very useful. But as i’ve used it more i realize it helps a lot. A surprising amount of code is just boilerplate, e.g. a single if-statement is 3 lines but you’re not going to abstract all your if statements, so you write similar if statements over and over again. It especially helps when i’m programming in a language or library i’m not familiar with, because i don’t quite…

This is exactly what concerns me about copilot. Reducing the barrier to writing boilerplate will make sure a lot more of it is written. Copilot will probably have a tendency to balloon SLOC as its autocomplete means adding an extra 35 lines is just a click away. Of course not everybody will use it this way and responsibly used it'll be fine yadda yadda yadda but it is going to shape developer behavior - most especial…

I'm also worried about needing to review boilerplate. I find that it's tedious to go through and make mistakes harder to spot. As said by Yaron Minsky:

> "You can’t pay people enough to carefully debug boring boilerplate code. I’ve tried."

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