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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

#261

Post by gonehome »

hbn wrote: post #183
gonehome wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't go so far as to say they're exceptional. They're gaining good graces for developers by offering a bunch of free (for now) tools that people like. But most of their big breadwinner software is still abysmal to use. I just tried cold starting Word and getting into a blank document on my i9 MacBook Pro and it took about 15 seconds. Windows is increasingly a dystopian user tracking and ad serving platform that…

They’re strategically exceptional, but beyond that a lot of their products (or subsidiaries) are also dominant for good reason (vscode, GitHub).

O365 and the product integration there (teams) is why they crushed slack despite slack’s headstart. Slack sold out to languish at salesforce while Microsoft will now just own that space.

Cherry picking a Microsoft app for macOS is like looking at iTunes on windows, it’s not really representative. Even Windows itself isn’t that important (that was one of the big strategic changes after Ballmer left and Nadella took over). You’re right about edge though (which is why Microsoft abandoned it for WebKit).

Microsoft also ships (something Google can’t do very well). I think their current trajectory is probably undervalued because people have not properly updated from outdated historical sentiment.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#262

Post by neom »

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…

Spot on. Microsoft are a joke when they're losing and a joke when they're winning. I'm old enough to have seen the full circle and I'm super curious to see what happens when M$ is back on top.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#263

Post by folkrav »

airstrike wrote: post #170
wseqyrku wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same is true if you use `git push` in which case all the code is transferred through the wire and is collected by GitHub which may or may not be desirable.

git != GitHub

I think OP's point was that GitHub=Microsoft, so you're effectively sending your code to Microsoft in one way or another. Although the licensing/privacy policies are probably different for private repositories.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#264

Post by eitland »

gonehome wrote: post #188
bredren wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple has always had its own hardware based silo to some extent (excellent products and design, fully integrated). Still, I suspect the AI stuff will be hard for them. They were first to market with Siri and it’s still trash 13yrs(?!) later. It’s always been what they’re weakest at, I’m not sure LLMs will be different for them. The headset could still give them a nice hardware platform advantage though if that UX bec…

> Still, I suspect the AI stuff will be hard for them. They were first to market with Siri and it’s still trash 13yrs(?!) later.

Long time Android user here, only iPhone since 3 years ago:

Siri I use to set timers and I sometimes use its unsolicited suggestions.

Google only tried to make practical jokes on my expense, like suggesting I call the customers CTO or text a friend-of-a-friend at 0400 in the morning.

One single time I can remember Google actually getting a suggestion correct.

This probably works better today than four years ago and maybe it always worked better if you were in a US timezone and spoke American English, but with Siri setting timers at least works and a few times a year it comes up with smart suggestions.

(Yes, I'm not too impressed with Siri either.)

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#265

Post by agentultra »

hu3 wrote: 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…

It feels absurd.

A Chat-GPT4 model will generate unit tests? Hallelujah! I hate writing tests! Yay!

Except how do you know it's generating the right tests? Can it explain its reasoning? Unit tests are a weak form of automated specification. Why are we inferring our specifications from examples to begin with? Who is going to walk through the reasoning and verify these are the right tests and make sense and specify the correct properties? Can Chat-GPT discover properties and prove theorems?

We used to do this in code review where humans could explain their reasoning. Now we have Chat-GPT4 which will give you a plausible-sounding answer that is completely wrong and makes no sense. We have to read every line it generates and make sure it contains no errors, is properly specified, makes sense, etc... something we're extremely ill-equipped to do.

The problem of programming, for me, hasn't been about how much code I write or how quickly I write it. It has always been about solving the right problems with elegant solutions. The code itself is an artifact of the real work.

CoPilot just doesn't really help here. It doesn't understand specifications and doesn't do any reasoning. It can't take a specification, generate a program, discover new abstractions that make the solution more elegant, and explain its reasoning. It can generate a heck of a lot of code though! Wow! Is it the right code? Maybe!

But that's what we get with humans, right? No!

Humans can explain their reasoning.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#266

Post by dheera »

RulerOf wrote: post #177
filmgirlcw wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s officially from GitHub. There is some weird language (that I’ll absolutely pass feedback on to the team), I think because GitHub Next is a different organization from GitHub proper, but I can assure you, this is an official GitHub app. But I totally agree that this isn’t a great/clear message about where this is from.

The domain name on that authorization prompt was more than enough to get me to decline. I wouldn't have hesitated at all if it were at next.github.com.

Time to register a rogue Github Pages site at next.github.com?

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#267

Post by jghn »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #205
jghn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine does, and therein lies my issue.

If that's the case, would co-pilot be useful anyway? Or are you off the range where suggestions wont help?

In theory there are no rules about importing code, beyond the usual licensing issues. But people use SO and such all of the time, right? If one *really* wanted to do a global audit of improperly imported code, we'd all have bigger problems. So from that perspective it's status quo.

But I don't want to be the person caught uploading proprietary code to another company's servers.

It's not a major issue, and I doubt it'd ever be a practical problem. But fear of punishment keeps me away.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#268

Post by vincentkriek »

lancesells wrote: post #245
ilovetux wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have to wonder at what point developers remember how anti-developer Microsoft used to be Microsoft has historically been anti-opensource, but not anti-developer. Their first product was a BASIC interpreter and in my experience throughout the 90s and early 2000s their developer ecosystem (aka Visual Studio) has really been first-class. I am not a fan of Microsoft because they have been openly hostile to open source,…

Many people paid to host their code at Github to only then have it sold back to them and others in the form of Copilot. IMO that's very anti-developer.

That is not anti-developer, but definitely anti-opensource. As a developer I dont really care my code is used to make copilot better and sold in that way.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#269

Post by cubefox »

RivieraKid wrote: post #227
mkaic wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would something smarter than us be our pet?

Because we will have full control over it. It will do what we ask. The AI has no motivation or personality, it's just a tool used by humans.

Agentic AIs are more useful than mere tools, therefore they will be built, and agents have motivation. The alignment problem is how to give them exactly the right motivation, such that they keep us as pets instead of killing or factory farming us. Like humans keep cats.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#270

Post by soiler »

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…

> have to wonder at what point developers remember how anti-developer Microsoft used to be and potentially move away from their ecosystem

I mean, any company can become hostile to a large portion of its userbase. Most are. Microsoft already is with Windows OS being spyware. Are you saying that you think all of this is a trap to bring developers in to VSCode etc. and then transform it into a terrible experience? People will leave then. SWEs are not generally an audience that is unwilling to replace bad tools.

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