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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#641

Post by alluro2 »

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.

That link is... really something - it actually gets better and better the further down you go.

By "better", I mean more absurd, shocking and funny :)

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#642

Post by ALittleLight »

TruthWillHurt wrote: post #547
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…

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 have to toggle it on and off. I find that if I'm thinking about what to write it is absurdly distracting to see a suggestion, which is usually wrong, because the suggestion steals my focus. On the other hand when I don't really need to think that much Copilot often gives valuable suggestions that I accept.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#643

Post by buildbot »

croes wrote: post #629
lolinder wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be a problem if Microsoft didn’t also have their own Bing

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#644

Post by dkga »

alana314 wrote: post #221
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…

Copilot has been amazing for me too. It's gotten to the point where I want similar smart autocomplete features in other software, such as spreadsheets or doing music in my DAW. I think those will come too eventually.

Well, to some extent DAWs like Logic and GarageBand already have some “autocomplete”, eg their drummers.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#645

Post by avereveard »

toyg wrote: post #303
threatofrain wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github Copilot is on the fence for me between yes/no at $100 per year. I agree that you should rarely if ever allow Copilot to write multiple lines, as your double-checking or debugging time is going to exceed your time savings — the probability of good-looking but bad code is just that high right now. In order to experience a net time-win you'll likely want to be an intermediate at whatever you're doing. If it were…

In the long run, I expect very few people will pay for a dedicated Copilot account. It will get bundled in some "development enterprise bundle", heavily discounted. Employees in medium and large shops will just receive it as standard, with their VS or Github paid licenses. Which means it will actually cost half the sticker price.

I don't see this working in business large enough to have a legal department

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#646

Post by ALittleLight »

scifibestfi wrote: post #612
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…

What would be your estimate for how much time it saves?

One example of Copilot saving time - the other day I was trying to remember how to access a value from a map in Go. This doesn't take much time - alt tab to browser, ctrl + t for a new tab, type in "golang get value from map", click on a stackoverflow result, scroll down, glance at the result, alt tab back to IDE, and do it. With Copilot, Copilot knew what I was trying to do and suggested the right code to me and I accepted the suggestion by pressing tab.

But! I think the savings are even bigger because there is no context switch. If I have my browser open I might find myself going to hackernews, checking my email, looking at my stackoverflow notifications, browsing twitter - whatever. Copilot is not only faster, it keeps my focus on the code without giving me a chance to get distracted. In some sense, for this example, Copilot saved me 5-10 seconds by not needing to Google something. In another sense, it might have saved me an hour because I didn't decide to just check something on twitter while I had my browser open.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#648

Post by uwuemu »

natefinch wrote: post #168
uwuemu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your budget of course, but I don't think it's worth $10/month. I pay just a little bit more than that for an entire IDE. The problem with Copilot is that it's USEFUL for boilerplate code and when you need a lot of copypaste "coding" (think APIs, controllers, etc... basically shifting data around the place), but any time you need to actually code something with some actual algorithmic logic behind it, it's…

I very often will let it suggest its thing and then tweak it to work how I want. It's like super auto-complete for me. If I can't remember how a specific pattern goes for some library, I'll let it write it for me, and then double check it to make sure it's doing what I want. That's still faster than me going to check the API and writing it all out by hand. Most projects are 90% BS glue code and 10% actually interesti…

> Most projects are 90% BS glue code and 10% actually interesting code. I don't mind only having help with the 90%.

Yea, that makes sense, I agree with that. If your use case is skewed more towards "BS glue code" as you say, you'll find more use out Copilot. Then $10/month can be fair, cheap even.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#649

Post by robswc »

lveillard wrote: post #403

Guys you're getting a lot of bad comments for one simple reason. You failed your delivery. 1) You should have managed the expectations of the users in a better way. Tell them it will become a paid feature from the begining, so nobody gets surprised 2) The way everyone unsderstood this today was too aggresive. An infinite warning in visual studio saying "hey, i've stop working, please sign up and pay or uninstall me".…

I think a great rule of thumb is to never take away things that were previously free (maybe more for features of a service/startup).

Copilot is such a marvel though. I think they could have gotten away with it if they did like you say and give more of an advanced warning.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#650

Post by naikrovek »

Longlius wrote: post #584
blip54321 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Willful copyright infringement for monetary gain can be prosecuted as a criminal act in the United States (and many other countries including Japan) and it's highly possible Github themselves can end up in hot water for facilitating this.

wow the number of legal experts that appear and debate hypotheticals when everything is spelled out quite clearly in the license agreements is very high on this site.

Triply so when Microsoft is involved.

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