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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#221

Post by alana314 »

cube2222 wrote: post #151

I've been using Copilot for a few months and... Yeah, it makes mistakes, sometimes it shows you i.e. the most common way to do something, even if that way has a bug in it. Yes, sometimes it writes a complete blunder. And yes again, sometimes there are very subtle logical mistakes in the code it proposes. But overall? It's been *great*! Definitely worth the 10 bucks a month (especially with a developer salary). :inser…

Copilot has been amazing for me too. It's gotten to the point where I want similar smart autocomplete features in other software, such as spreadsheets or doing music in my DAW. I think those will come too eventually.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#224

Post by danuker »

tpxl wrote: post #165
danuker wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also its users might be violating the GPL. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3627319/github-copilot-is-...

How can the user be violating the license, not the distributor? If I give you a binary that gives you a Disney movie, it's not you violating the copyright, it's me. The copilot itself is violating the copyright, not its users.

The user of Copilot is a developer - the distributor.

And you might argue that Copilot is also a distributor.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#225

Post by wtetzner »

mccorrinall wrote: post #162
colechristensen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copilot also got its training sets for free and not really with any kind of consent from the owners of that code, and it's really quite ambiguous as to if what it's doing violates many different open source licenses of its training data Microsoft is selling AI services based on training data they don't own and didn't acquire rights to, nobody writing the licenses of the code it's using had the opportunity to address…

You need to require rights for scraping publicly available resources? Damn, rip Google.

"Publicly available" isn't the same as "public domain" or "no copyright".

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#226

Post by jerf »

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

"how to put a sentence together describing the rules, it absolutely doesn't actually understand how "Chii" melds work"

The more experience I get with GPT-3 type technologies, the more I would never let them near my code. It wasn't an intent of the technology per se, but it has proved to be very good at producing superficially appealing output that can stand up not only to a quick scan, but to a moderately deep reading, but still falls apart on a more careful reading. At least when that's in my prose it isn't cheerfully and plausibly charging the wrong customer or cheerfully and plausibly dereferencing a null pointer.

Or to put it another way, it's an uncanny valley type effect. All props and kudos to the technologists who developed it, it's a legitimate step forward in technology, but at the same time it's almost the most dangerous possible iteration of it, where it's good enough to fool a human functioning at anything other than the highest level of attentiveness but not good enough to be correct all the time. See also, the dangers of almost self-driving cars; either be self-driving or don't but don't expect halfway in between to work well.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#227

Post by cjauvin »

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

It's interesting to draw parallels between the way you describe it and the way more general large language models (LLMs, of which Copilot is in a sense, a specialized instance, applied to code, instead of general language) operate: they also always "know" how to answer any specific question, or how to complete any prompt, without any exception. A model which would be able to "show restraint", and "know when it doesn't know", would be a really impressive improvement to this technology in my opinion.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#228

Post by hag »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #128
dannytatom wrote: post #54

I've enjoyed using it for free, but not sure it's worth the $10/mo yet. When it works great, it's a nice-to-have for speeding up development but has yet to give me anything I wouldn't be able to just write myself. And when I wish it would give me the answer to something I don't know how to do, it spits out something very wrong. Also feels kind of icky to train on open source projects and then charge for the output.

Agreed. At the very least, I was hoping they'd bundle it with the GitHub Pro subscription for individuals rather than as a separate product.

Totally agree. I was expecting to get this feature as part of my Pro subscription.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#229

Post by threatofrain »

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

Github Copilot is on the fence for me between yes/no at $100 per year. I agree that you should rarely if ever allow Copilot to write multiple lines, as your double-checking or debugging time is going to exceed your time savings — the probability of good-looking but bad code is just that high right now. In order to experience a net time-win you'll likely want to be an intermediate at whatever you're doing.

If it were $60 yearly it'd be an auto-yes for me.

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