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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

#231

So if MSFT's message here is "software engineers don't have to know how to code," what's the value of knowing how to code? Seems at odds with their core customers' self interests.

it's totally not the message, weird that you would say this; this is a tool just to make the developers' lives easier

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#232
post #55
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone asked me to pay for a team subscription for Copilot. As I'm CTO (and thus legally responsible for those agreements that you normally just click through); I read the terms of service, and they do not actually grant license to the code. They say in very clear terms: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR TAKING SUGGESTIONS. So, as I don't want to encourage people to think that they can simply copy over copilot solutions I dec…

Do you also disallow your employees from reading github, stack overflow, or other sources of code?

Reading Stack Overflow doesn't send my code to Stack Overflow.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#233
I think they've done it backwards in regards to it writing tests. Tests are the check to make sure the A.I is in check. If A.I is writing tests, you have to double check the tests.

You should write tests, then the A.I writes the code. It almost doesn't matter what the code is, as long the AI can regenerate the code from tests.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#234
post #167

I would love to hear from other people here but I tried it for a while and dropped my subscription. For short things it was nice, but the larger the suggestion the worst it got. I found myself constantly mentally debugging the output it suggested, I do not know if it was faster but I was mentally exhausted by it, unable to go for long periods of time. Dumb code completion is predictable, I know I'll need to press dow…

(Software dev for 15+ years)

I'm using it for Typescript + NodeJS development. I find Copilot most valuable when it's something I'd need to Google anyway, like how to format a date string or how to do X in selenium. 8 out of 10 times the answer is right, and the other times it is at least interesting (gives me an idea of what to look for).

This quick feedback is _way_ faster than googling and keeps me in the IDE, and also just makes it more enjoyable to code when there is this "pair programming" partner that I can interact with via code/comments and it will generate ideas for me, even if they aren't all perfect.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that Copilot X will be brought to other IDEs as well, not just Visual Studio [Code].

Seems that you didn't bother checked their site before commenting. Check it out here[0], but TLDR: they have VS, VS code, Jetbrains and NeoVim logos in there. [0] https://github.com/features/preview/copilot-x

I don’t know about jetbrains, but the neovim plug-in is not full featured like the vscode one. For example, it doesn’t have the “explain this code” feature. The repo also does not allow issues or PR’s so you can’t even ask for it to have feature parity. I am a paying GitHub copilot user with the neovim plugin (in Emacs), but I find this second-class treatment frustrating. I expect copilot X to be more of the same, since it is even more deeply integrated into vscode.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#236
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think it's comparable to a junior engineer. It works best for pretty short snippets of code. It also can't decide when to run the program and how to interpret/make changes based on the results.

So… a junior developer? I (mostly) kid but some seniors I know struggle at those things.

I mean I get what you're saying. But it doesn't just struggle with those things - they aren't even the sort of things it can do.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#237
post #62

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…

It sure looks like they're setting themselves up to (again) be in a position where no one can get around them.

The irony of this comment is absolutely wonderful.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#238
post #130

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…

> 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? Inferior to machines at almost everything? Most jobs are safe, look at the 25 most common jobs in the US - cashier, food preparation worker, stocking associate, laborer, janitor, construction worker, bookkeeper, server, medical assistant, bartender, administrative ass…

Do you genuinely believe machines can't handle most of those jobs with ease?

The only reason why they haven't already been replaced is because humans can be exceptionally cheap. Much easier to hire somebody to sit at a desk for $10/hour doing repetitive tasks than spend millions implementing systems across the board to do what they do (for now).

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#239
post #130

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…

UBI is a half-measure, we need democratic, communal control of industry.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#240
post #126
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.

Looks neat! But I would need it for pushing numbers around with Python, not building websites.
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