GitHub Copilot is generally available • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#481

Post by Gigachad » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #385

jerf wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Copilot does a great job of example functions like “function that posts a tweet with the current time”

It falls apart when writing actual code that exists in an app. I’m not convinced even the lowest junior dev could get away with not knowing programming.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#482

Post by BrandonJung » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #410

omginternets wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More so than, say, classical snippets, auto-complete, and speech-to-text? And pray tell, how much typing is required to go back and fix the incorrect code produced by copilot? P.S.: wishing you a speedy recovery!

the person using co-pilot on all their hobby projects described it as working best as an advanced auto-complete, so I guess you should ask them that. I figure advanced auto-complete should not produce big blocks of code that are more likely to have logical errors in them, since the grandfather comment here suggested that problems show up when you generate larger blocks of code.

this is consistent with the feedback from many of the users we have talked to as well (transparently I am with Tabnine). Long blocks of code are difficult to digest while short quick ones can be very quick AND easy to validate the logic.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#483

Post by BrandonJung » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

manimino wrote: post #349

jerf wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Generated texts often sound very confident, even when they are totally incorrect. A humorous example: https://cookingflavr.com/should-you-feed-orioles-all-summer/ Human pair programmers will signal when they're not sure about something. A code generator will not.

when we first built Tabnine we had confidence percentages next to suggestions. Do you think this would help?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#484

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

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 think your response highlights why individual developers are the worst target market and why you want to sell to businesses if you're in the tool space.

Let's say the average developer in the US costs 10k a month (I think that's pretty close to the real average of around 120k a year). So copilot would cost .1% of that developer's salary. I realize calculating things around "improvements in developer productivity" involve lots of fuzzy math, but it would be stupid for any company NOT to pay this if it improves developer productivity by just 1%.

Another way to think about it that I think may be more "real world": Let's say I'm CTO of a big company with 1000 software developers. Do I think it's going to be a better investment to hire another developer so I have 1001 developers, or instead use that other developer's salary to buy all the devs at my company a Copilot license?

But for some reason individual developers think that anything over $1-2 dollars a month is an exhorbitant cost.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#485

Post by xmodem » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

It's hilarious to me that Copilot is now GA, but our rep GitHub contact has been promising to get us onto the merge queue beta for months and it's still vaporware. I'm beginning to wonder if that product exists at all.

https://github.blog/changelog/2021-10-27-pull-request-merge-...

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#486

Post by 734129837261 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

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.

Well, true. But that's the point, it saves you from having to do all the work.

Copilot saves me from leaving my IDE for a large amount of situations. It saves me from opening a new tab (tab #1003) and Googling my problem, finding a solution on StackOverflow, scrolling down to the answers, curating the best answers, picking the one I like, copy/pasting it, then tailoring it to my liking (JS to TS, naming conventions, etc.) and testing it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#487

Post by BrandonJung » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

wiremine wrote: post #429

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'm the CTO for a small(ish) software consultancy. $10/month is a no-brainer price for just the "amazing all-rounder autocomplete". Spending $10/month/dev to help maximize highly billable engineers? It's well worth the price.

would you prefer it trained ONLY on your code or are you ok with the broad use of non-permissive code used for CODEX?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#488

Post by moffkalast » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

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.

"With enough open source snippets one could code up just about anything."

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#489

Post by frereubu » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #466

paskozdilar wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t this how they managed to stop the Borg?

Given my vintage, I'm thinking more about the noughts-and-crosses game in War Games from 1983.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#490

Post by cfn » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

The day Copilot or something like it catches on is the day when programming changes for real. Instead of being hired to create new systems or extend existing systems built by other programmers we will only be hired to fix Copilot generated code.

I suffer enough with legacy code created by junior programmers that long left the company. I imagine how much more fun will be to work with this type of code.

* I know Copilot is not capable of creating full systems yet but it is a matter of time before they evolve it to generate all the bolierplate code for you based on some comments you make or, even worse, some UML abstraction!