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GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

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Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#121

Post by w-m »

macNchz wrote: post #93
w-m wrote: post #33

I tried getting myself on the CLI waitlist ( https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-cli/ ). That they use ffmpeg as the example hits a huge pain point for me. But: "Next Waitlist by GitHub Next would like permission to: Act on your behalf Not owned or operated by GitHub" Why does signing up for a waitlist require me to give permissions to an app to act in my account? An app that isn't even officially from GitHub? Th…

It's interesting because the Copilot for PRs preview uses an app that does say "Owned and Operated by GitHub". Probably just an oversight, but I'm pretty sensitive about what access GitHub apps have, especially given the list of major attacks that have happened in recent years that were initiated by someone sneaking malicious payloads in somewhere along the development pipeline. Curious why they'd use a totally diffe…

Signing up for the technical preview of Copilot Chat also worked as expected, it was just a checkmark and a button on github.com, not even an oauth dialog.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#122

Post by jchw »

Not very impressed with either Copilot or ChatGPT for programming purposes. I'm sure it will be interesting for some people, but whenever I really feel like I could benefit from an intelligent AI, it usually falls flat. Most commonly, it will just generate calls that don't exist, and if you try to get it to implement them, it will write bullshit. Now the thing is, maybe it really does improve developer productivity by virtue of letting the developer autocomplete boring things. To be fair, I did see some opportunity here. But on the other hand, it also seemed to harm productivity, as I had to carefully review everything it did, and eventually had to disable Copilot so that it would stop annoying me with nonsense completions every time I stopped typing. I'm not really sure if language models are actually getting closer to what we really want, or if they're getting closer to some other maxima that just looks similar. Clearly they're doing something that is novel and probably even useful, but with increasing parameter counts it seems that the underlying problems are not changing. Something certainly seems like it must be fundamentally wrong...

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#123

Post by agent281 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #46
elil17 wrote: post #45

Yesterday, Copilot could not write a program with SymPy, which is a library for doing symbolic math in Python. (e.g., it would consistently confuse symbols in equations with Python variables). Today it uses SymPy as well as it uses NumPy (occasional mistakes, but overall it has the right idea). Absolutely astounding.

I don’t think people understand the hockey stick we’re on. Don’t focus too hard on the failings, look at the scaffolding being rapidly deployed that makes the iterative improvement process exceptionally tight.

I'm mostly curious how far the hockey stick will go up. Eventually most things level off.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#124

Post by bredren »

ren_engineer wrote: post #13

Microsoft really seems to have wrapped up the developer ecosystem with VS Code and the Github acquisition combined with OpenAI. They are going to have an absurd amount of data to optimize their models thanks to that, not sure how other AI focused companies can overcome that have to wonder at what point developers remember how anti-developer Microsoft used to be and potentially move away from their ecosystem. Credit t…

The waiting list signup does not allow you to pick Pycharm, which previously has had a GitHub copilot plug-in.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#125

Post by vintermann »

jghn wrote: post #78
tarruda wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you use copilot integrated in the editor, does microsoft collect all source code data on your project or only context used to perform the completions?

Concern over this is the #1 reason I have not yet tried to use Copilot. For my hobby projects I don't care enough to pay for it. And if it's phoning home proprietary code, I can't allow that to happen.

Eh, as long as my employers don't care (they don't), I don't care. I have no illusions that my code/our code will give Microsoft any valuable training data it couldn't trivially get elsewhere.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#126

Post by ilaksh »

w-m wrote: post #105

What I'd love to see in the future is a proper refactoring UX. This new chat interface is probably a good start, as it seems able to replace code blocks in your original source file. But most code changes in the real world require changes in multiple locations. And I don't usually have questions for the AI, I have small tasks for it to do. I hope we can get to a point where I can give quick commands to a Copilot-like…

There are multiple startups for this.

You can test the concept on my site https://aidev.codes although I don't have github integration yet.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#128

Post by darkwater »

brookst wrote: post #90
toomuchtodo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people understand the hockey stick we’re on. Don’t focus too hard on the failings, look at the scaffolding being rapidly deployed that makes the iterative improvement process exceptionally tight.

It’s the same with every paradigm shift. “GUIs are pretty but slow. Ok, they’re faster but just glued on to CLI programs. Ok, they’re native but less information dense. Ok, that’s a good thing, but…” “The internet is nice but you still have to go to the store/bank. Ok, you can shop/bank online but you still have to call airlines. Ok you can buy airline tickets but you still have to go to the library to research. Ok,…

I'm speaking more generally but

> Maybe it’s a half empty / half full thing, but there is some portion of the populace that can’t acknowledge the promise of anything until it is perfect and comprehensive.

Probably because paradigm shifts or new ways of doing things come with a lot of trade-offs that can be seen only after the change has been absorbed more. Early adopters are usually blind to these issues (or decide to be blind at them), conservatives don't look at the improvements but think that there might be something not that good in the future by projecting past experiences.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#129

Post by bredren »

gonehome wrote: post #58
ren_engineer wrote: post #13

Microsoft really seems to have wrapped up the developer ecosystem with VS Code and the Github acquisition combined with OpenAI. They are going to have an absurd amount of data to optimize their models thanks to that, not sure how other AI focused companies can overcome that have to wonder at what point developers remember how anti-developer Microsoft used to be and potentially move away from their ecosystem. Credit t…

Microsoft is a so well positioned on this I think Silicon Valley has forgotten what it looks like when they don’t have a horrible CEO. When Microsoft executes well, they’re a scary force. They were exceptional under Gates and it looks like they are again. There’s a massive paradigm shift we’re just at the beginning of and Microsoft has been putting pieces in place for the last couple of years. Nadella has really turn…

If it were not for the impending headset, Apple would look a wee bit caught out as well.

I suspect once Apple turns toward gen ai, all of its other advantages (infra, hw, instal base, services, etc) will propel it to forefront.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#130

Post by hu3 »

Scary. For the first time in my life, I feel like my expertise is at risk of being rendered obsolete. Maybe not this year, but the writing is on the wall.

Soon coding without an AI will feel as antiquated as delivering food by horse. And resistance is futile because markets will punish those who refuse.

We'll probably need less and less developers as AI advance. Just like we need less manual labor in farms today.

And coding is just one of the many applications where AI can replace brains.

Governments will have to ponder about what to do with a world of people who became inferior to machines at almost everything. Universal Basic Income?

It's amazing and terrifying at the same time.

Perhaps our first contact with an alien will be with one we created ourselves.

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