I find it rather annoying tbn, not necessarily the suggestions but the UI.
But then again I'm the kind of person who hates autocomplete and only using copilot for the novelty factor rather than actually needing it.
GitHub Copilot is generally available
621–630 of 796 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#622Earlier 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…
I don't think you've actually used it tbh. It's much quicker to read code than to write it. In addition, 95% of Copilots suggestions are a single line and they're almost always right (and also totally optional). Here's how it actually works in practice 1. Start a line to do an obvious piece of code that is slightly tedious to write 2. Type 2 characters and Copilot usually guesses what you want based on context. Perha…
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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
An example of how much copied code is worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... For this content: a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organization (SSO) of the Java (API), and the API documentation. The cost was: "statutory damages up to a maximum of US$150,000".
I don’t believe the nine lines of code was the relevant part leading to damages. It was the fact that Google copied this entire API design (SSO) for Java. I don’t think GPT-3 is in danger of doing that.
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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#624I'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…
I really don't like it. I find I spend my time reviewing Copilot suggestions (which are mostly wrong) rather than thinking about code and actually doing the work.
I turned off auto-suggest and that made a huge difference. Now I'll use it when I know I'm doing something repetitive that it'll get easily, or if I'm not 100% sure what I want to do and I'm curious what it suggests. This way I get the help without having it interrupt my thoughts with its suggestions.
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft could simply crawl archives of code wherever they exist, and use that to build copilot. GitHub hosting open source communities is a way of giving back.
Microsoft gives free copies of Office to schools. Why do you think it does that? MS benefits from people being locked into its service and suite. It provides premium subscriptions for additional features. Hosting code "for free" is part of its business model. It's not a way of "giving back"
Their point is that they didn't need to own GitHub to build copilot—they could have used the public code regardless.
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#626Does it work better for some languages over others (e.g. C++, C#, F#, Python versus Go, Ruby, PHP)?
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#627I’ve been meaning to play around with this!
Now fingers crossed for somebody to make DALL-E 2 generally available! (or for somebody to hook me up with a referral code or whatever :) )
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it perhaps be you not coding for a living (and being lower in skill as you say) that make you think it's worth it? For me the bottleneck is seldom typing. And while Copilot can sometimes dish out some more advanced stuff, I still have to verify it and understand it. Since I can basically solve every problem I encounter day-to-day, Copilot's contribution is not that useful.
> For me the bottleneck is seldom typing This is one of my pet peeves in this field. People create whole programming languages that are "expressive", just to save typing a few dozen characters and have huge tirades against "verbose" languages that require typing a bunch of boilerplate. If typing the code is the bit that takes the longest for you in a project, stop and take a good look in the mirror. There's something…
"verbose" and "expressive" are on two different axes. Go is neither verbose nor expressive, for example, while XQuery is both verbose and expressive.
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft gives free copies of Office to schools. Why do you think it does that? MS benefits from people being locked into its service and suite. It provides premium subscriptions for additional features. Hosting code "for free" is part of its business model. It's not a way of "giving back"
Their point is that they didn't need to own GitHub to build copilot—they could have used the public code regardless.
It's a lot more complicated to crawl code somewhere in the web than to crawl github.
They could even change github so it benefits their code crawling.
Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available
#630I 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 o…
With Copilot it's 10 lines of code by thousands of users.
It adds up.