31–40 of 139 posts
Having just purchased copilot and a user of Tabnine in the past (using Phpstorm) here is my own personal opinion. The suggestions offered by Tabnine weren't anywhere good as copilot - not even by a long shot (at least for PHP and Javascript). But almost an year has passed since I used this so I don't know if they have had a major update and the results are improved, but previously 1 out of 10 tabnine suggestions were…
For this specific comparison, it’s essential to start from the technology, as many of the product differences stem from the differences in approach, architecture, and technology choices. Microsoft and OpenAI view AI for software development almost as just another use case for GPT-3, the behemoth language model. Code is text, so they took their language model, fine-tuned it on code, and called the gargantuan 12-billio…
> Copilot queries the model relatively infrequently
Huh? It queries whenever you stop typing.
> Copilot does not suggest code in the middle of the line, as its AI model is not best suited for this purpose
This is at best false, at worse disingenuous. Yes, it won't insert a completion in the middle of a line, but this is trivially solved by inserting a newline in the middle of the line and then triggering a completion at the end of the line you just created.
> In addition, Tabnine makes a firm and unambiguous commitment that no code the user writes is used to train our model.
Copilot has this option too...
> Copilot uses one universal AI model, which means that every user is getting the same generic assistance based on an “average of GitHub”, regardless of the project they're working on.
I mean, anyone who has used Copilot for more than 5 seconds would know that this isn't true. Copilot does a fantastic job at reading the current file and providing suggestions relevant to the file, rather than some hypothetical "average of GitHub"
For this specific comparison, it’s essential to start from the technology, as many of the product differences stem from the differences in approach, architecture, and technology choices. Microsoft and OpenAI view AI for software development almost as just another use case for GPT-3, the behemoth language model. Code is text, so they took their language model, fine-tuned it on code, and called the gargantuan 12-billio…
> Copilot’s architecture is monolithic: “one model to rule them all.” It is also completely centralized - only Microsoft can train the model
It's true that only Microsoft can train the model—for now. But GPT-3 is a monolithic model, and OpenAI allows fine-tuning. There's nothing about the architecture that prohibits Microsoft from offering customers the ability to fine-tune the model.
> Copilot does not suggest code in the middle of the line, as its AI model is not best suited for this purpose.
Here's a screenshot of GitHub Copilot suggesting code in the middle of a line:
https://imgur.com/gallery/Jp2qg7X
> Copilot uses one universal AI model, which means that every user is getting the same generic assistance based on an “average of GitHub”, regardless of the project they're working on.
If the model is big enough that seems to be an advantage, not a disadvantage. At least, when I use GPT-3 to create a 4chan greentext, or an X-Files script, or a presidential speech, or an article by Hunter S. Thompson (or a presidential speech by Hunter S. Thompson) it doesn't particularly feel like it's averaging things out.
Having just purchased copilot and a user of Tabnine in the past (using Phpstorm) here is my own personal opinion. The suggestions offered by Tabnine weren't anywhere good as copilot - not even by a long shot (at least for PHP and Javascript). But almost an year has passed since I used this so I don't know if they have had a major update and the results are improved, but previously 1 out of 10 tabnine suggestions were…
Quoted post unavailable.
Having just purchased copilot and a user of Tabnine in the past (using Phpstorm) here is my own personal opinion. The suggestions offered by Tabnine weren't anywhere good as copilot - not even by a long shot (at least for PHP and Javascript). But almost an year has passed since I used this so I don't know if they have had a major update and the results are improved, but previously 1 out of 10 tabnine suggestions were…
Quoted post unavailable.
I actually really liked Tabnine but sometimes the tons of suggestions got annoying. I upgraded my IDE and forgot to add copilot but didn't feel like I needed to. Maybe that's a mistake... but sometimes it felt like it was getting in the way and I did encounter a few times it would create "bugs" which I would have to spend time going back and fixing.
Not trying to knock these though. They're both very impressive tools.
Having just purchased copilot and a user of Tabnine in the past (using Phpstorm) here is my own personal opinion. The suggestions offered by Tabnine weren't anywhere good as copilot - not even by a long shot (at least for PHP and Javascript). But almost an year has passed since I used this so I don't know if they have had a major update and the results are improved, but previously 1 out of 10 tabnine suggestions were…
Quoted post unavailable.