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GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

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Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#91

Post by petercooper »

lolinder wrote: post #3

They'd better get on the IntelliJ integration fast— if I'm going to switch editors in order to use an LLM coding assistant, I may as well just switch to Cursor, which has a strong head start on them on the assistant and also has a much better autocomplete. I'm honestly surprised to see no mention here of them moving to replicate Cursor's autocomplete—IMO that is where Cursor's real edge lies. Anyone can wrap a chatbo…

JetBrains has got its own version in the pipeline as well: https://blog.jetbrains.com/junie/2025/01/meet-junie-your-cod...

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#92

Post by 827a »

theasisa wrote: post #10
lolinder wrote: post #3

They'd better get on the IntelliJ integration fast— if I'm going to switch editors in order to use an LLM coding assistant, I may as well just switch to Cursor, which has a strong head start on them on the assistant and also has a much better autocomplete. I'm honestly surprised to see no mention here of them moving to replicate Cursor's autocomplete—IMO that is where Cursor's real edge lies. Anyone can wrap a chatbo…

I tried Cursor a couple of years ago and wasn't impressed - has it improved a lot? I only use autocomplete, not the chat function and at the time found CoPilot superior.

Cursor is ten times better than VSCode and Copilot. Its extraordinarily good at reducing two-minute tasks to 10-seconds, and the more you use it the better you get at identifying these two-minute tasks.

Example (web dev): hit cmd+k --> "this is a two column layout. make sure the columns are the same size". It just does it. To do that myself I would have had to switch to a browser, google flex box, go to that classic flexbox cheat sheet that we all know and love, tweak around with the different values of justify-content and justify-self, realize that was the wrong approach, then arrive at the correct answer of making sure each column flex-grows identically. two minute task, now 10 seconds.

hit cmd+k -> "flow these columns one-after-another on smaller screens" done. thirty second task, now 10 seconds.

hit cmd+k -> "enable or disable the rendering of this component via props" done. new prop added, prop is flowed through to a `display` css property, easy.

The autocomplete is pretty good, but can get annoying. You definitely have to get used to it. However, the cmd+k quick fix thing is insane. Its literally made me at least 200% more productive, and I think that might grow to 300% as I learn to use it and it gets smarter (they just added Gemini 2.0 Flash; can't wait to try that out).

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#93

Post by wrs »

shaneofalltrad wrote: post #34
jgilias wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Cursor can do this, if you @codebase, isn’t there something similar in copilot? E.g., your codebase being vectorized, indexed, and used as an embedding?

I have had Cursor review all my file content solving similar things, but I would think it's limited to VSCode search capabilities and IMHO it's not great. I love how Pycharm handles indexing so search is fast and accurate. If they ever get agents going at the same quality as Cursor I would probably go to Pycharm for that advantage alone.

Cursor implemented their own code indexer so its RAG is not limited by VS Code search.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#94

Post by throw83288 »

suyash wrote: post #55
diggan wrote: post #38

> When we introduced GitHub Copilot back in 2021, we had a clear goal: to make developers’ lives easier with an AI pair programmer that helps them write better code. The name reflects our belief that artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t replacing the developer. Later: > GitHub Copilot’s new agent mode is capable of iterating on its own code, recognizing errors, and fixing them automatically. Is this Microsoft/GitHub ac…

The irony doesn't end there, later in the post they say "We’re excited to share a first look at our autonomous SWE agent and how we envision these types of agents will fit into the GitHub user experience. When the product we are building under the codename Project Padawan ships later this year, it will allow you to directly assign issues to GitHub Copilot, using any of the GitHub clients, and have it produce fully te…

> Effectively they have completely automated SWE job, pair programmer was just a marketing speak, real intention is clear.

Frankly, this was obvious to me since the Copilot Workspace announcement.

It's so hard not for me to not slide completely into nihilistic despair as a student right now. I chose wrong, and now there is nothing I can do. Day in and day out I'm talking about my projects and internships as if my entire field that I've dreamed about for the past decade isn't about to get torched. With the pace that this field is getting solved I probably won't even have enough time to "pivot" to anything before they also get solved or upturned as well.

Call me a doomsday prepper, but frankly I haven't heard a compelling argument against this line of thinking that is actually in line with the absurd development curve I've seen. 4 years ago these models weren't capable of stringing together a TODO app.

I really, really want to be wrong. I really do.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#95

Post by jacobsenscott »

nonethewiser wrote: post #64
diggan wrote: post #38

> When we introduced GitHub Copilot back in 2021, we had a clear goal: to make developers’ lives easier with an AI pair programmer that helps them write better code. The name reflects our belief that artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t replacing the developer. Later: > GitHub Copilot’s new agent mode is capable of iterating on its own code, recognizing errors, and fixing them automatically. Is this Microsoft/GitHub ac…

I dont think making Copilot better by handling its bad ouput means replacing developers. And GitHub certainly isn’t saying the goal is to replace developers. I accept that is how you are interpreting it and I can see the argument. But Github isnt trying to get one over in their messaging. And besides I just dont agree with the idea that it takes the developer out of the loop. Whose controlling this better version of…

The goal has always been to eliminate programmers.

Nobody wants to pay a bunch of desk workers six figures to make their business go brr, but they currently they have no choice. Trust me, every executive resents this to their core and they want all the programmers to go away - including github executives.

20 years ago you would hire a few expensive architects who would try and design the product in so much detail cheap jr programmers could build it. It didn't go well.

4GL languages tried to abstract away all the hard stuff - again it didn't go well.

"Low code" was big just before the AI thing. It didn't go well.

Attempts are outsourcing are constant.

Now we have LLMs. So far this has come the closest to the dream of eliminating expensive programmers. We'll see how it goes.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#96

Post by empath75 »

amrocha wrote: post #72

I don’t see how this is a net positive for programmers, and for people in general. It’s hard to fathom why anyone worked on this.

There is not a limited amount of coding work that is available to do in the world. Many more things will be automated if automation is cheaper and easier, and no matter how much software development work is done by bots, there will always be work for people to do.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#97

Post by whilenot-dev »

diggan wrote: post #88
someothherguyy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would the goal of agentic generative AI be other than to replace humans doing the same work?

For me that's a no-brainer also. I guess my question is more about why their messaging is so messy and direction-less. Why not just say outright what their plan is?

Backlash towards the direction off of GitHub? I mean GitHub has to be one of the biggest assets when it comes to training data for source code, no? Projects should have already moved off of it when Microsoft got in the drivers seat.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#98

Post by toprerules »

throw83288 wrote: post #94
suyash wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony doesn't end there, later in the post they say "We’re excited to share a first look at our autonomous SWE agent and how we envision these types of agents will fit into the GitHub user experience. When the product we are building under the codename Project Padawan ships later this year, it will allow you to directly assign issues to GitHub Copilot, using any of the GitHub clients, and have it produce fully te…

> Effectively they have completely automated SWE job, pair programmer was just a marketing speak, real intention is clear. Frankly, this was obvious to me since the Copilot Workspace announcement. It's so hard not for me to not slide completely into nihilistic despair as a student right now. I chose wrong, and now there is nothing I can do. Day in and day out I'm talking about my projects and internships as if my ent…

This must be your first hype cycle then. Most of us who are senior+ have been through these cycles before. There's always a 10% gap that makes it impossible to fully close the gap between needing a programmer and a machine doing the work. Nothing about the current evolution of LLMs suggests that they are close to solving this. The current messaging is basically, look how far we got this time, we will for sure reach AGI or full replaceability by throwing X more dollars at the problem.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#99

Post by gdhkgdhkvff »

diggan wrote: post #40
cruffle_duffle wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish cursor was an extension of VSCode and not a fork.

Does is matter in practice? Is there stuff you can do in VSCode that isn't possible in Cursor? I'm not a user of either, so honest question.

For one, you can’t debug c# code in cursor without using a hacky third party extension. Because the c# debugger is only licensed to run in official vscode instances. And only way you find out is you try to run c# and get a runtime error saying that it can’t run for that reason, you google/chatgpt the issue, find your way to some old GitHub Issues threads where someone mentioned that’s a possible solution.

Re: GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens

#100

Post by nickstinemates »

throw83288 wrote: post #94
suyash wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony doesn't end there, later in the post they say "We’re excited to share a first look at our autonomous SWE agent and how we envision these types of agents will fit into the GitHub user experience. When the product we are building under the codename Project Padawan ships later this year, it will allow you to directly assign issues to GitHub Copilot, using any of the GitHub clients, and have it produce fully te…

> Effectively they have completely automated SWE job, pair programmer was just a marketing speak, real intention is clear. Frankly, this was obvious to me since the Copilot Workspace announcement. It's so hard not for me to not slide completely into nihilistic despair as a student right now. I chose wrong, and now there is nothing I can do. Day in and day out I'm talking about my projects and internships as if my ent…

If you want to thrive in this world you need to change your attitude ASAP. New tech waves happen all of the time. Embracing them is the path.
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