Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Copilot is generally available

github.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 796 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#561

Post by jameshart »

734129837261 wrote: post #493
jameshart wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m already terrified how many developers have been working on proprietary code bases with copilot, having an extension in their editor upload all their employer’s proprietary code to Microsoft, who then share it with OpenAI - then they’ve taken code OpenAI and Microsoft sent back to them, of unknown authorship, and added it into their code. And now those devs are going to have to go to their boss and explain all the…

Eh. I'd be okay with making all the software in the world open-source. It's only a matter of time before we have computers powerful enough to reverse-engineer everything in a split second anyway.

Matters less what you would be okay with compared to what your corporate counsel would be okay with. But sure, go file that expense claim.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#563

Post by meowface »

BrandonJung wrote: post #483
manimino wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In my opinion it's probably not worth adding unless the highest-confidence suggestion for a particular completion is significantly lower than average. So it informs you when it's especially uncertain and doesn't have anything better to offer, but that's it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#564

Post by dotnet00 »

thdxr wrote: post #309

This has been the biggest productivity improvement to my workflow in years No it doesn't "understand what I'm doing" or "get everything right" but that's hardly the point It's often reducing the amount of labor I'm doing by hitting the keyboard by guessing 90% correctly what I was going to type It also often saves me from having to google how to do something, it's effectively serving me a search result right along my…

Agreed, copilot has been especially useful for boilerplate code or somewhat repetitive code like chess move enumeration, where the code for different pieces is similar but not the same.

It also saves a ton of time having to look up small pieces of syntax, I've taken to writing a lot of quick one-off scripts because copilot does a fairly decent job of generating code for the relatively simple individual steps.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#565

Post by keyle »

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…

As a polyglot who works in 4-5 different languages every 3-6 months, it's been very valuable.

I forget a lot of things, simple dumb stuff like type conversions or specific keywords spelling. Copilot takes care of 99% of that so I can focus on my higher level spec.

If anything sometimes it's too agressive. I start typing a word and it's already building up the rest of the application in a different direction...

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#566

Post by conradfr »

tedunangst wrote: post #535
presentation wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't make purchasing decisions based on the value they create but rather based on some ingrained assumptions about how expensive software is supposed to be. VSCode and many other complex pieces of software are free, autocomplete is built into my OS, and those subscription consumer software that does have a price usually are priced very low—so relative to those, $10/month feels like a lot (even though I h…

You'd think "very smart" programmers would be equipped to do basic cost/benefit analysis. If it costs $900 and provides $1000 in value, that's $100 more than not buying it.

It depends if as a employee, your working time stays the same.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#567

Post by LrnByTeach »

lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

a person bought a hammer/knife from a shop and used it to hurt another person. When the victim sues the attacker, can the manufacturer of hammer/knife pick up the tab?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#568

Post by bioinformatics »

LrnByTeach wrote: post #567
lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

a person bought a hammer/knife from a shop and used it to hurt another person. When the victim sues the attacker, can the manufacturer of hammer/knife pick up the tab?

Isn’t that what Biden wants to do with gun makers?

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#570

Post by blip54321 »

lsh123 wrote: post #555

I assume that Copilot uses open source projects on GitHub to “learn” what to suggest. Some of these projects might be under, say, GPL v3. A developer uses Copilot for a commercial project and Copilot insert a complete function from a GPL v3 code into this project. Someone notices this and sues the commercial project for breaking GPL v3. Will GitHub pickup the tab?

Damages. This question will come back to damages.

If you steal 10 lines of code from me, the damages will be the greater of:

- The benefit to you (10 minutes programmer time)

- The cost to me ($0)

- Statutory damages (probably $200)

In other words, it's very unlikely to be worth a lawsuit. The most likely outcome is:

- A legal letter is sent

- Infringing code is removed

- As good bedside manner, some nominal amount of money is transferred, mostly in some gesture designed to make the violated party feel good about themselves (e.g. a nice gift).

Post reply on HN