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Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#41
I was asking myself the same question not so long ago because Github Copilot's bugs kept bothering me and this is what got us to go into YC and build https://double.bot

If what you are looking for a high quality UX + access to the most capable models (today that'd be the GPT-4 killer, Claude 3 Opus), then I think you'll like what we've built.

Double ha similar features to all the other Copilots, code autocomplete, chat, etc but we've put particularly care around getting the small details right (even the smallest thing like making sure our autocomplete closes the brackets appropriately). If you're coming from Github Copilot you should check out this side-by-side comparison: https://docs.double.bot/copilot

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#42
I'm using supermaven these days. Big enough context to understand my full codebase well (I am often working on relatively small projects though), and it's super fast. They trained a custom model, I believe on edit sequences.

These copilots are way more useful when their knowledge context is cross-file; anything restricted to current active file or making me do work to select some file subset I'm gonna pass on.

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#43
Duet AI from Google. I have initially tried Copilot and it was sometimes slow in responding. Duet I feel is hyper fast and it sometimes suggest elegant solutions, I don't know if it has to do with any data trained on Google's own code base, I felt this particulary with Go code.

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#44

Neither Github Copilot nor GPT4 are worth your time. At best they partially guess the name of a function you're thinking about typing, at worst they give you almost a correct answer. I've been shocked by how close those models will get to almost understanding what you're attempting to do, while still fundamentally getting it wrong. Last month, after a while of realizing I was spending more time correcting suggestions…

Agreed that Github Copilot is not worth anyone's valuable time. You should check out the new Claude 3 Opus model, it's noticeably better. Right off the bat, it's less 'lazy' with its generations, and for me, it has been able to solve bugs that GPT-4 could not solve.

Just this week we made it available on https://double.bot (VS COde Copilot extension). Have been getting similar feedback from multiple users

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#45

Neither Github Copilot nor GPT4 are worth your time. At best they partially guess the name of a function you're thinking about typing, at worst they give you almost a correct answer. I've been shocked by how close those models will get to almost understanding what you're attempting to do, while still fundamentally getting it wrong. Last month, after a while of realizing I was spending more time correcting suggestions…

I see a whole lot of potential in these tools, and in some domains they are starting to deliver on some of the promise. But by and large I agree with this statement - they're actually costing me time because I have to do the research to see where they went wrong. I'm better off learning it properly and idiomatically from scratch right now.

I don't get this at all. What kind of code are you writing that you have to literally go and research what it spat out?

In my experience 90% of code is 90% the same as another piece of code in the same repo, with small differences, and copilot will make you fly writing that code.

If you can't read the output code, does it mean the rest of your codebase is similarly unreadable?

The complexity in a codebase or a system is usually from different parts integrating or an overall architecture, but that's totally different to an individual function

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#46
For me, personally, Copilot is the best because you are typing and it is just suggesting. Very often I type something, wait 2 seconds for its answer (knowing it is going to get it right 80% of the time) and press tab. Sure, it misses a ton, but I see it as a great autocorrect that is always there trying to help. Now, copilot chat and everything else are very bad. I don't like them.

If you are "intentional" I usually just use ChatGPT-4 directly. I've had a super pleasant experience with Cursor, too. You can just open Cursor and say "write readme for me", it will scan your project and right a decent readme. It is also eeeeextremely goooood at "I need to know where in the codebase is doing this" and it finds. But for day to day I still prefer chatgpt 4.

So I would say:

- If you want a nice autocorrect, copilot

- If you want something that knows your project and tries to help, cursor

- If you just want something smart, chatgpt with gpt-4.

I would say copilot lets me be 15% faster daily, and gpt-4 about 30% faster (when I need it), but I need it less often - maybe twice per day.

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#47

In addition to paid subscriptions, you might want to consider running an LLM locally. One of a number of projects enabling this approach is "continue" - https://github.com/continuedev/continue

The issue with local IMO is that you'll going to have to compromise on quality. And I really don't want to waste my time talking with inferior models when better models are widely available.

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#48

Neither Github Copilot nor GPT4 are worth your time. At best they partially guess the name of a function you're thinking about typing, at worst they give you almost a correct answer. I've been shocked by how close those models will get to almost understanding what you're attempting to do, while still fundamentally getting it wrong. Last month, after a while of realizing I was spending more time correcting suggestions…

I hadn't explicitly asked that, but that is what I've been curious about too, as in are these, currently, good enough. Which is why I wanted to start with whichever is the best, again currently, rather than bang my head against ones that are not good.

I had tried a simple experiment to generate some basic Go REST service, XML parsing code, using Bard and ChatGPT and they were actually not bad. But, that was a very simple and new code.

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#49

Is Claude 3 on a pay per use case or a fixed monthly fee? I’ve used it a bit with the free 5USD they have and it’s looking so so much better than gpt 4… the problem is I have the feeling it’s also extremely more expensive

Software dev is one of those careers where top performers earn a lot of money, so IMO a tool that generates higher quality code is a no brainer, even if it's 'expensive'. Similarly to a Bloomberg terminal if you are in IB (those things are $25k/mo).

That being said if you want to keep playing with Claude 3 Opus, we have it available on our free tier at https://double.bot

Re: Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?

#50

Was an early adopter of Github Copilot but I quickly turned it off because of the noise. I really like AI for "gap filling" (for example, I used AI extensively to help me write my bash deployment scripts for simpatico.io) and porting tasks, both of which lend themselves to copy/paste into a browser.

When you say noise do you mean the autocomplete just spamming you all the time, like for example in the middle of writing a comment?
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