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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

#501

Post by layer8 »

UK-AL wrote: post #485
layer8 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tests don't (can't) prove tthat code is correct. They are merely a rough plausibility check that the code isn't completely wrong and didn't regress. You generally can't derive the right code just from tests.

You can write tests about properties you care about which may not be everything. Generally in some of the more financial applications i've written I would be ok with people rewriting the app as long as it passes the tests. I've even written tests that say this set of input goes to this output, for various different subsets of input. Anything outside of the of the defined input sets fail validation. Than it randomly p…

You can approximate it, but to represent really all properties, in the end it becomes a mirror picture of the actual code you are testing, which then begs the question.

A random sample of inputs that is hidden from the AI also won’t allow it to derive a corresponding implementation. And if the set of sample inputs is not hidden, then the AI is still free to produce an implementations that only works for those sample inputs.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#502

Post by booi »

axlee wrote: post #451
paxys wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We forgot very quickly that there was an entire generation of developers who paid $1000-2000 or more for an MSDN subscription just as the base cost for doing business. This is what Microsoft does.

Or $299 a year for the Apple Developer Program just for the great honor to be able to develop for that platform...

that's not entirely fair... you also need a iDevice and some form of new-ish mac as well.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#503

Post by drBonkers »

chrisan wrote: post #490

Is there a way to talk to copilot after something has been made? For example: I just asked it to search for something on a public api in a comment and let it auto complete the function. The resulting code was pretty decent except it included a hard coded access_token in the url. This was a blank project, I don't even have an access token for this api - guessing someone posted theirs in a public repo at some point. Is…

I think this is what Copilot Chat will do.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#504

Post by [deleted] »

kiviuq wrote: post #492
layer8 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you need to get yourself into an application domain with more bespoke protocols and tooling, and domain-specific expertise, that aren’t public on the internet and that AI therefore doesn’t have much of an idea of. At least at this point, AI is only of little help in my daily work, unfortunately, because I’d have to first explain it orders of magnitude more context than fits into its token buffer.

Porn? (scnr)

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#505

Post by boppo1 »

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…

If I'm using VS Code, am I opting in to sharing my code as training data?

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#506

Post by DeathArrow »

cornholio wrote: post #457
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,…

There is some nuance here. Microsoft executed "commoditize your complement" to perfection - the complements to their OS being PC hardware and applications. This meant they had to be insanely good at supporting a vast array of diverse hardware, but also offered exceptionally good support for developers to keep the barriers of entry low in the Windows software market. They had even a cute name for these commoditized an…

> it was only through sheer luck and complacency that the mobile revolution caught them on the wrong foot.

Windows Phone wasn't bad and I wish we could have more competition in mobile space.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#507

Post by chatmasta »

pantulis wrote: post #498
chatmasta wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you tried co-pilot? I wanted to try co-pilot, but noped out when I saw it required a subscription. I thought it was in some kind of beta and would still be free. Is there a way to try it without signing up for a subscription? My general worry is about becoming personally dependent on a paid tool just to do basic programming work.

Your worry is going to become obsolete pronto, just like you are not worried about depending on a paid CPU to perform basic computations. The meaning of "basic programming work" will be redefined by these tools. The entry barrier of the subscription is a shame, that's for sure. But before open models are avilable, the field is proprietary today: we are going to witness a battle of AIs that will be as bloody as the Un…

I suspect you're right, and I'm generally optimistic about this future efficiency. But it doesn't make me any less of a cheapskate :)

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#508

Post by ctoth »

snickerbockers wrote: post #458
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…

>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. I'm extremely skeptical about this happening. I haven't seen any evidence that GPT is capable of creating something new or even thinking logically. What's going to happen if you ask it to create something that isn't like anything in its training set? My experience…

Counterpoint: how often do you as a developer create something totally novel that has never been built before?

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#509

Post by UK-AL »

layer8 wrote: post #501
UK-AL wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can write tests about properties you care about which may not be everything. Generally in some of the more financial applications i've written I would be ok with people rewriting the app as long as it passes the tests. I've even written tests that say this set of input goes to this output, for various different subsets of input. Anything outside of the of the defined input sets fail validation. Than it randomly p…

You can approximate it, but to represent really all properties, in the end it becomes a mirror picture of the actual code you are testing, which then begs the question. A random sample of inputs that is hidden from the AI also won’t allow it to derive a corresponding implementation. And if the set of sample inputs is not hidden, then the AI is still free to produce an implementations that only works for those sample…

You'd probably separate example tests and validation tests. Also test descriptions should fed into the prompt to help guide it, like BDD style tests.

On test failure, the data is fed back into the prompt about what failed for another iteration.

This will help avoid over-fitting, and generate another generation on test failure. I mean you can't guarantee correctness, but you could probably get it pretty close. Humans also have the same problem.

Re: GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview

#510

Post by ChancyChance »

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…

Here's a simple way to tell if your expertise is at risk:

- If you can get more done by working more hours, your job is at risk.

When I was a programmer for most of past life, this was this case. Now I've got multiple decades under my belt and am a h/w and system architect. I can't get more done by grinding. My job depends on sharing information with other people, that have their own schedules, resource dependencies, supply chains, and pricing, and arriving at best fit solutions to move complex projects forward.

I think if you want to protect yourself from being replaced by AI, you need to be part of a larger network where the challenges are more about synthesizing information than grinding.

My $0.02.

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