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GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

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31–40 of 333 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#31

Student here: I legitimately cannot understand how senior developers can dismiss these LLM tools when they've gone from barely stringing together a TODO app to structuring and executing large-scale changes in entire repositories in 3 years. I'm not a singulatarian, but this seems like a brutal S-curve we're heading into. I also have a hard time believing that there is enough software need to make such an extreme prod…

> I also have a hard time believing that there is enough software need to make such an extreme productivity multiplier not be catastrophic to labor demand. Every single time a change like this happens, it turns out that there is in fact that much demand for software. The distance between where we are now and the punch card days is greater than where we are now and the post-LLM days and yet we have more software devel…

> Someone is still gonna have to convert what the business wants into instructions for the LLM

It seems like with GitHub is aiming for is a future where "what the business wants" can just be expressed in natural language the same way you might explain to a human developer what you want to build. I would agree that right now, LLMs generally don't do well with very high-level instructions, but I'm sure that will improve over time.

As for the security concerns, I think that's a fair point. However, as LLMs become more efficient, it they become easier to deploy on-prem, that mitigates one significant class of concerns. You could also reasonably make the argument that LLMs are more likely to write insecure code. I think that's true with respect to a senior dev, but I'm not so sure with junior folks.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part of software development is not writing code, full stop. It never has been and it never will be. The hard part is designing, understanding, verifying, and repairing complex systems. LLMs do not do this, even a little bit.

I guess my worst fear is not "no more jobs because AI can code" but "no more junior jobs because AI can code under the supervision of a senior". SWE jobs will exist, but only seniors will have them and juniors are never hired. Maybe the occasional "apprentice" will be brought on, but in nowhere near the same amount. Where my blind hope lies more specifically is in networking into one of those "apprentice" roles, or m…

Unless there's some major breakthrough and AIs are able to gain judgement and reasoning capabilities, I don't think they'll be taking junior jobs any time soon.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#33
I don't use Copilot in particular but in the software space, everything is constantly changing, and the models are trained infrequently so they are never familiar with the things I ask about. Reality is outrunning the models for now but that may change.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#34
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less time spent writing code is more time you can spend thinking about those hard parts, no?

Yes? But it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code. So why force yourself into a reading-mostly position when you don't have to? You're more likely to get it wrong. There are other ways to decrease typing time.

>it's commonly understood that reading code is harder than writing code

I don't know about that. Maybe for kernel code or a codec. But I think most people could read (and understand) a 100 line class for a CRUD backend faster than they could write one.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part of software development is not writing code, full stop. It never has been and it never will be. The hard part is designing, understanding, verifying, and repairing complex systems. LLMs do not do this, even a little bit.

I guess my worst fear is not "no more jobs because AI can code" but "no more junior jobs because AI can code under the supervision of a senior". SWE jobs will exist, but only seniors will have them and juniors are never hired. Maybe the occasional "apprentice" will be brought on, but in nowhere near the same amount. Where my blind hope lies more specifically is in networking into one of those "apprentice" roles, or m…

Might I suggest Andrei Alexandrescus's CppCon 2023 Closing Keynote talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J48YTbdJNNc

The C++ standard library has a number of generic algorithms that are very efficient, like decades of careful revision from the C++ community efficient. With the help of ChatGPT Andrei makes major improvements to a few of them. At least right now these machines have a truly impressive ability to summarize large amounts of data but not creativity or judgement. He digs into how he did it, and what he thinks will happen.

He isn't fearmongering he is just one coder producing results. He does lay out some concerns, but at least for the moment the industry needs junior devs.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#36

Student here: I legitimately cannot understand how senior developers can dismiss these LLM tools when they've gone from barely stringing together a TODO app to structuring and executing large-scale changes in entire repositories in 3 years. I'm not a singulatarian, but this seems like a brutal S-curve we're heading into. I also have a hard time believing that there is enough software need to make such an extreme prod…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#37

Student here: I legitimately cannot understand how senior developers can dismiss these LLM tools when they've gone from barely stringing together a TODO app to structuring and executing large-scale changes in entire repositories in 3 years. I'm not a singulatarian, but this seems like a brutal S-curve we're heading into. I also have a hard time believing that there is enough software need to make such an extreme prod…

Software Engineering is not a subset of computer science, they just intersect. And as a software engineer, your job can be summarized as gathering requirements and designing a solution, implementing and verifying said solution, and maintaining the solution in regards to changes. And the only thing AI does now is generating code snippets. In The Mythical Man Month, Brooks recommend to spend 1/3 of the schedule to plan…

> and it would have been faster to just do it.

False. Obviously this depends on the work, but an LLM is going to get you 80-90% of the way there. It can get you 100% of the way there, but I wouldn't trust it, and you still need to proof read.

In the best of times, it is about as good as a junior engineer. If you approach it like you're pair programming with a junior dev that costs <$20/mo then you're approaching it correctly.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#38

Student here: I legitimately cannot understand how senior developers can dismiss these LLM tools when they've gone from barely stringing together a TODO app to structuring and executing large-scale changes in entire repositories in 3 years. I'm not a singulatarian, but this seems like a brutal S-curve we're heading into. I also have a hard time believing that there is enough software need to make such an extreme prod…

Accountants thought spreadsheets would kill their profession, instead demand for them exploded. Compilers made it much easier to code compared to writing everything in Assembly. Python made it much easier to code than writing C. Both increased the demand for coders. Code is a liability, not an asset. The fact that less technical people and people who are not trained engineers can now make useful apps by generating mi…

People also forgets that coding is formal logic that describe algorithms to computer which is just a machine. And because it’s formal, it’s rigid and not prone to manipulation. Instead of using LLMs you’d better off studying a book and add some snippets to your editor. What I like about Laravel is their extensive use of generators. They know that part of the code will be boilerplate. The nice thing about Common Lisp is that you can make the language itself generate boilerplate.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#39
post #33

I don't use Copilot in particular but in the software space, everything is constantly changing, and the models are trained infrequently so they are never familiar with the things I ask about. Reality is outrunning the models for now but that may change.

There's a Black Mirror-esque movie plot idea in there! Everyone starts using bionic implants to filter out offensive parts of reality like people they don't like and stuff, until one day all the filters start falling out of sync with reality...

...and then aliens invade.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#40
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part of software development is not writing code, full stop. It never has been and it never will be. The hard part is designing, understanding, verifying, and repairing complex systems. LLMs do not do this, even a little bit.

I like the Primeagen's examples for the simple stuff. On stream he fires up an editor and copilot then writes the function signature for quick sort. Then copilot gets it wrong. It creates a sort function, but one worse than quick sort but not as bad as bubble sort. These LLMs will get better. But today they are just summarizing. They screw up fairly simple tasks in fairly obvious ways right now. We don't know if they…

can't wait until they're good enough to screw up complex tasks in subtle ways after undercutting the pay of junior developers such that no one is studying how to program computers anymore
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