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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#381

Post by lampe3 »

2fast4you wrote: post #198
bluelightning2k wrote: post #100

My unpopular take: most comments here are super entitled. To paraphrase: "sure it's minblowing and the biggest productivity gain in years, but I want it FREE". Yes. You got used to it being free. And now it's not. But $10/mo is a steal. It's more than fair and far, far less than they could get. And no. They don't owe you anything. In fact, they probably host your code (often free), and less directly provide your IDE…

> ...it's minblowing and the biggest productivity gain in years... I wouldn't go that far. It's a pretty big help in repetitive/boiler plate code and it's pretty good at intelligently transforming data, but I've found it gets in the way more often than it helps for every other case.

Yes for me it was the same. Usually it got the boilerplate code kind of okay and then I had to tweak it manually anyway.

I would also not go that far.

Having good auto completion because of Typescript for me is the way way way bigger productivity gain.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#382

Post by mcluck »

Like many people I thought Copilot was neat but ended up uninstalling it because it caused more problems than it solved. Reading the comments here, it seems that most of the people who get value out of it would be better served creating a set of snippets. If all you need is to fill in boilerplate all the time or repeat general test structures but with different arguments, just make a snippet. Every major code editor supports this and they're really easy to setup and use.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#383

Post by k0k0r0 »

lmarcos wrote: post #166

Reminds me of the scene in Fight Club where Tyler explains how he makes money (he sells rich women their own fat asses in the form of luxury soap). In this case the fat is open source code hosted in GitHub, the soap is Copilot, and the rich women are us, the developers.

Underrated comment.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#384

Post by prepend »

paskozdilar wrote: post #345
omginternets wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis, but feel like it’s ignoring the elephant in the room: writing code is not the bottleneck in need of optimization. Conceiving the solution is. Any time “saved” through Copilot and it’s ilk is immediately nullified by having to check it’s correctness. From there, the problem is worsened by the Frankensteinesque stitching together of disparate parts that you describe. I can’t i…

Can Copilot write tests? That way it could test its own code and tweak it until it works. Of course, one would then ask how to verify tests. I suppose Copilot could write meta-tests - tests that verify other tests. That way it could test its own tests and tweak them until they work. Of course, one would then ask how to verify meta-tests. I suppose Copilot could write meta-meta-tests - tests that verify meta-tests. Th…

You need an adversarial co-pilot to write tests for those tests so you would put the two AIs against each other to try to properly test.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#385

Post by jrochkind1 »

jerf wrote: post #226
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 readin…

Wow, it actually sounds like a great tool for someone who doesn't actually know how to program at all but still managed to get a programming job. Sounds like it could be literally years until they realize you don't know how to program and are using a GPT-3-type completer.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#386

Post by jwpapi »

I’m honestly shook at all the comments here. I don’t make any money coding and I’m probably in the lower 25% of HN readers in terms of skills, but I’m more than happy to pay $10/m. I would pay Github $10/m for what they already give me.

What is your time worth? You should easily get $60/hr, so you need to save 12 minutes per month to make it worth. I would pay that for all my employees.

CoPilot is not a replacement for writing code, but it’s incredible useful when you are stuck and or / write simple logic.

Often I don’t have the right method, function or logic on mind. Before I google, I write a comment of what I want and 8/10 CoPilot generates the right code.

Typing the comment, checking the solution, reformatting it is To me Github CoPilot is a standard part of my IDE and I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore. It saves me at least an hour a day of coding. Some stuff is really crazy. I invite you all to try to be open-minded. You have to experience it.

// You have to code for yourself

I don’t really like this argument, because if that argument would be true, we would also need to now how our codes translates to 1 and 0s and how the electronics build our application than. AutoComplete is part of our life on our phone and it can be with developing. Don’t make it harder as it needs to be.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#387

Post by tmalsburg2 »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #367
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that GitHub charge only 10$/month suggests that they themselves don’t believe in their product. Because if it would actually work, i.e. speed up software development by, say, >10%, developers should be happy to pay 10 times as much or more.

This is a rather silly argument... by that logic since using the Adobe suite saves me at least it has a dozen hours every month I would be happy paying $500 a month for it. There's a limit to what individuals are willing to pay for a subscription service irrespective of how many hours it saves you. Now if we're talking enterprise and bulk licensing then that's a separate issue.

This is a rather rude response… Your comparison with Adobe suite has a flaw, but I have no interest in exchanging ideas in this tone.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#388

Post by luckystarr »

A few observations:

The IntelliJ Copilot plugin became worthless just before the release. It borks up the formatting and requires almost more keystrokes to make the code work than it saves.

It sometimes works brilliantly, the result has almost always been either duplicated code which could use refactoring or simple minded attribute access code which could be solved generically. I have the fear that it will push developers to go the "easy route" and not think about the code too much while churning out more and more lines of generated code, so I'm unwilling to recommend it to junior developers.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#389

Post by metadat »

exyi wrote: post #157
metadat wrote: post #28

I tried GHCP but found it overall unhelpful and kind of stressful to use, because of potential bugs I might overlook and "import" into my project. Definitely does not seem worth paying for me to end up more stressed out, haha.

So it depends if you prefer writing or doing code review :) You'd maybe need another tool which converts review work to writing work

I'm good.. without it :D

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#390

Post by euos »

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…

I’ve been using it as well. As annoying as it is, I am sure I would miss it enough to pay $100/year. Luckily, I somehow qualified for free access…
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