GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#371

Post by nixarn » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:48 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #224

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…

Who will verify that those data are correct? What if majority of the code sucks, what if majority code uses "best practices" that are no longer valid - think of many GoF Java "patterns" that are now considered to be code smell? AI will not invent anything, it will effectively reproduce mistakes made by others. The process of code writing is such a small part of the whole IT project, that shortening of time spent on w…

Have you tried co-pilot? I don't want to code without it. Saves so much time and produces good results, instead of searching for answers online, which isn't easy as you get into ad filled sites, find shitty Stack Overflow answers and webpages with outdated docs and examples.

Two examples from this week. Formatting dates in javascript, I had a datetime string and I wanted to show it as YY-MM-DD HH:MM for our internal tool. I don't know by heart exactly what to in this case although it's far from rocket science, so now I could write a comment what I wanted done and copilot coded it for me.

Same when I wanted a request to become a file download for the user, not something I've done many times before, and I could kinda reason that it probably needs the header to be set to something. And googling for this didn't give good results, yo need the right language, framework etc. With copilot I just wrote the comment // return file as download, and co-pilot wrote the code to set the header and send the bytes. Amazing!

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#372

Post by 0xDEF » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #239

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…

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

>we need democratic, communal control of industry

That is called socialism. I don't mind socialism and state owned enterprises as long as the force of market competition is still at play. That is the reason state owned enterprises don't suck in China. They have multiple SOEs within the same fields like car manufacturing and telecommunication competing against each other.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#373

Post by GartzenDeHaes » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #336

jackosdev wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vscode is an incredible piece of software, better than all the paid options in my opinion, the amount of features they pump out month to month is outstanding, just a bit slow due to electron. I never understood why they put so much effort into a free product that I run from Linux and Mac, but I'm happily paying the copilot subscription so it all makes sense now.

You honestly had me do a double take. Copilot costs money? Maybe I get it through some other thing, but its been free for me as long as I can remember. It's wrong so often that I generally keep it on because it's entertaining. I wouldn't pay for it.

You might be thinking of IntelliCode, which was released in 2019. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#374

Post by nbar1 » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

> 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?

Try mass culling

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#375

Post by aliasxneo » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #181

programmarchy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth it even for hobby projects, imo. It reduces the time spent on mundane tasks and allows you to think at a higher level and just move faster. Maybe you achieve a level of zen from implementing utility level code, similar to how some people might still write assembly code, but otherwise it’s a valuable tool/skill to learn. Tangentially, I think there’s some fear associated with adopting AI tools, perhaps beca…

> my sense is that developers who don’t cultivate this new skill set will fall behind That might be true but it's an easy skillset to pick up compared to programming. The bigger danger is that new developers will lean on AI so much that they do not pick up the fundamentals of programming in which case they will definitely be left behind.

Many, probably. However, the curious types will likely be further enhanced by AI. I've never been one to take code at face value, and I have been enjoying sessions with ChatGPT asking all sorts of questions about some of the stuff it produces. The answer is usually sufficient, and in cases where it's not, I've been given enough background context to know where to find the answer online or in books.

Honestly, I've seen myself master many more additional things since I've started including it in my daily routine.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#376

Post by cloudking » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #169

There are 5 different sign-up waiting lists. Each one needs to be signed-up for separately. [1] Copilot X: https://github.com/github-copilot/chat_waitlist_signup/ [2] Copilot Voice: https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-voice/ [3] Copilot Docs: https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-docs/ [4] Copilot for PRs: https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-pull-requests/ [5] Copilot CLI: https://githubnext.com/pro…

Thanks saved a lot of time!

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#377

Post by dathinab » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:51 PM UTC

quijoteuniv wrote: post #278

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…

Masterstroke is that they are including Linux, in WSL also in windows server. They are 1 step away from being a Linux distribution that runs legacy windows software within containers :D

or actively remove many reasons why people ended up trying out linux distributions in the past

like e.g. universtity students needing to run programs which don't run on windows natively all the time, so many try out native Linux distros, some stay. Now all of them can just use WSL. Or like devs which need to develop for Linux servers etc.

Basically they have accepted that windows server have failed and their server license business model isn't that good anymore too due to how the cloud changed things. So instead of pushing for a Windows everywhere ecosystem they now embrace Linux on servers (preferable on Azure ;) ) and Windows on the desktop using WSL to bridge the dev experience and also bridge to university student use case.

But you can be sure that if they see a way to make it harder to install Linux on systems and get away with it both legal wise and PR wise (probably using some excuses about "security") you can be sure they will do so. Especially if they can push the blame onto others (like the hardware vendors not implementing some option in the BIOS which is needed to allow other OSes to be installed). Through at least for now I expect them to act careful to not damage their new image.

Also one way the failed the "Windows desktop" thing is by producing a pretty bad out of the box desktop experience for many people (like I'm fine paying for an OS but not if there is even a single AD in there, or bloat ware). This create reasons for people to switch to Linux which had been much less common during windows 7 days.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#378

Post by cmrdporcupine » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #328

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…

Public companies aren't people. It doesn't make sense to trust them, but it also doesn't make sense to hold a grudge against them. They act in a way that fits the moment. Right now, Microsoft seems to be in a "build good tools" moment. If they get too dominant they could re-enter an "abuse power" moment. But that would be because it's what they think is in their best interest, not because "Microsoft is [uniquely] unt…

Yep. But also this kind of essentialist thinking doesn't work for people, either, so :-) Nobody is just one thing or another. And neither are companies. They act on various levers, in response to various interests, and it's about looking at the tendencies and patterns. Holding grudges against people makes little sense, either.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#379

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #301

mynameisvlad wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering they have several third party editor logos in full display on their main landing page, I'm going to believe Microsoft and OpenAI over some random naysayer on the internet who didn't even bother to check. https://github.com/features/preview/copilot-x What benefit would they even gain from locking it to their free editor? If anything, VS Code is a way for Microsoft to push other services like Copilot. The s…

So there is 100% feature parity then for all other editors other than VS Code then? YES or NO? As I said before, "They are more 'Committed' to supporting VS Code than giving total feature parity to other editors." Sticking a bunch of logos with no guarantee of 100% feature parity as seen in VS Code is exactly what lock-in is. > If anything, VS Code is a way for Microsoft to push other services like Copilot. The strat…

> So there is 100% feature parity then for all other editors other than VS Code then? YES or NO?

Yes. If you had taken the time it took to look up your comment to actually do something productive like looking this up, you'd have probably found it yourself. Yet, here we are.

Copilot fully supports JetBrains and NeoVim alongside Code and VS:

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/getting-started-with-gith...

In fact JetBrains is listed before VS proper in the getting started guides:

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot

Sounds totally like a place that "is more committed to supporting VS Code than giving total feature parity to other editors".

> Re-centralizing everything and owning the entire developer ecosystem to MS / GitHub. What could possibly go wrong? /s

How, exactly, is providing Jetbrains and Neovim support "re-centralizing everything"?

Next time, do the most bare minimum of research before you double then triple down on an absurd argument not based in reality.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#380

Post by havelhovel » Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 4:52 PM UTC

wfeefwfwe wrote: post #341

agentultra wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this all sounds very plausible and convincing until this part: > But that's what we get with humans, right? No! > Humans can explain their reasoning. can you explain your reasoning as to why a language model would never be able to match a human's ability to explain its reasoning? i've met a lot of humans that are quite bad at this, and i will likely never know for sure why they wrote the unit tests that they wrote un…

> can you explain your reasoning as to why a language model would never be able to match a human's ability to explain its reasoning?

It’s a language model, not a reasoning model. A lot of its training data happens to be logical, so it sounds logical, but it’s still just acting on probability. Thinking it’s “explaining” anything it produces is a mistake.