Seriously just screw Microsoft. Screw their ceo. Blatant parasites
Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
251–260 of 315 posts
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#252Tangential, but I think github's secret weapon of inertia is. . .(drumroll) github stars. They're still seen by a lot of people as a sign of project maturity and use. My unfounded suspicion is if they all dissapeared tomorrow, people would be a lot more likely to try alternative code forges. I've been using codeberg of late, more because of their politics than anything, but in all honesty the user experience between…
I never understood going by stars when there's a much stronger signal in how many issues are being tracked and closed. Very easy to see if its software people actually use
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
All true, but the argument for AI is that it makes you far more productive as an individual, which if true should be an easy sell. In fact, some developers are quite committed to it, with a fervor I've not seen since the "I'm never going back to the office" fervor a few years ago. Version control is more of a "short term pain for long term gain" kind of concept; it is not surprising some people were hard to convince.…
> it makes you far more productive as an individual, which if true should be an easy sell Writing unit tests where needed makes you more productive in the long run. Writing in modern languages makes you more productive. Remember how people writing assembly thought compiled languages would rot your brain! But people just resist change and new ways of doing things. They don't care about actual productivity, they care a…
Early compilers really did suck. They were long term big wins for sure, but it wasn't unreasonable for someone who was really good at hand assembly, on tightly constrained systems, to think they could beat the compiler at metrics that mattered.
Compilers did get better, and continue to--just look at my username. But in the early days one could make very strong, very reasonable, cases for sticking with assembly.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Version control has quickly won. It was so popular that people kept writing new systems all the time. CI was popular. Most major open source projects had their own CI systems before GitHub. "AI" on the other hand is shoved down people's throats by management and by those who profit from in in some way. There is nothing organic about it.
Version control is almost 50 years old. It has very slowly won. AI adoption is, for better or worse, voluntarily or not, very fast compared to other technologies.
The fervor with which some feel the need to defend AI is what is incredible. Adoption, innovation, impact, not so much.
The attempt to compare it with Version Control, with sliced bread, with plumbing and sanitization practices. Think of any big innovation and compare it with it until people give in and accept this is the biggest bestest thing ever to have happened and it is spreading like wildfire.
Even AI wouldn't defend itself this passionately but it conquered some people's hearts and minds.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it makes you far more productive as an individual, which if true should be an easy sell Writing unit tests where needed makes you more productive in the long run. Writing in modern languages makes you more productive. Remember how people writing assembly thought compiled languages would rot your brain! But people just resist change and new ways of doing things. They don't care about actual productivity, they care a…
> " Remember how people writing assembly thought compiled languages would rot your brain! " No, I don't remember that and I've been around awhile. (I'm sure one could find a handful of examples of people saying that but one can find examples of people saying sincerely that the earth is flat.) It was generally understood that the code emitted by early, simple compilers on early CISC processors wasn't nearly as good as…
Note also that it took, more or less, a hardware revolution in the form of RISC, to make compilers able to compete. A big piece of the RISC philosophy was to make it easier for compiler writers.
They eventually got there, (and I expect AI will eventually get there too), but it took a lot of evolution.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
All true, but the argument for AI is that it makes you far more productive as an individual, which if true should be an easy sell. In fact, some developers are quite committed to it, with a fervor I've not seen since the "I'm never going back to the office" fervor a few years ago. Version control is more of a "short term pain for long term gain" kind of concept; it is not surprising some people were hard to convince.…
> it makes you far more productive as an individual, which if true should be an easy sell Writing unit tests where needed makes you more productive in the long run. Writing in modern languages makes you more productive. Remember how people writing assembly thought compiled languages would rot your brain! But people just resist change and new ways of doing things. They don't care about actual productivity, they care a…
> Writing unit tests where needed makes you more productive in the long run.
Debatable? It has positive effects for organizations and for the society, but from a selfish point of view, you gain relatively little from writing tests. In your own code, a test might save you debugging time once in a blue moon, but the gains are almost certainly offset by the considerable effort of writing a comprehensive suite of tests in the first place.
Again, it's prudent to have tests for more altruistic reasons, but individual productivity probably ain't it.
> Writing in modern languages makes you more productive.
With two big caveats. First, for every successful modern language that actually makes you more productive, there's 20 that make waves on HN but turn out to be duds. So some reluctance is rational. Otherwise, you end up wasting time learning dead-end languages over and over again.
Second, it's perfectly reasonable to say that Rust or whatever makes an average programmer more productive, but it won't necessarily make a programmer with 30 years of C++ experience more productive. This is simply because it will take them a long time to unlearn old habits and reach the same level of mastery in the new thing.
My point is, you can view these through the prism of rational thinking, not stubbornness. In a corporate setting, the interests of the many might override the preferences of the few. But if you're an open-source developer and don't want to use $new_thing, I don't think we have the moral high ground to force you.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Searched for PRs authored by copilot or mentioning copilot. So Github copilot forces your PR to tag them as coauthored by Copilot or users can be slick without mentioning it?
So the author is complaining about people using copilot, not about copilot submitting comments and PRs automatically without the repo owner's consent?
Yes. Copilot doesn't make automatic PRs and issues.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an excellent point - but a lot of the pressure to use AI in orgs is top-down and I've never seen that with useful tech tools before; they always percolated outward from the more adventurous developers. This makes me wary of the AI enthusiasm, even though I acknowledge that there is some genuine value here.
AI is the first dev tool that makes a difference that is immediately noticeable even for higher layers, that's why they apply pressure. The core problem, as OP called out, is change aversion. It's just that for many previous useful changes, management couldn't immediately see the usefulness, or there would've been pressure too. Let's not forget that well-defined development processes with things like CI/CD, testing,…
Execs can suddenly reliably measure productivity? Or does AI just give them the easier to measure, short term benefits.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> " Remember how people writing assembly thought compiled languages would rot your brain! " No, I don't remember that and I've been around awhile. (I'm sure one could find a handful of examples of people saying that but one can find examples of people saying sincerely that the earth is flat.) It was generally understood that the code emitted by early, simple compilers on early CISC processors wasn't nearly as good as…
Note also that it took, more or less, a hardware revolution in the form of RISC, to make compilers able to compete. A big piece of the RISC philosophy was to make it easier for compiler writers. They eventually got there, (and I expect AI will eventually get there too), but it took a lot of evolution.
Really? X86 isn’t RISC and it ruled the world during, not before, the time of compilers.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point, pretty much all of the US markets (and the USD) is hinging on "unlimited upside" promised by techbros and their magic AGIs & robots. They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Wonder what'll happen to JPY once the Yen-carry unwinds from this massive hype-cycle - will probably hit 70 JPY to the dollar! Currently Sony Bank in Japan offers USD time-deposits at 8% p…
They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Honestly I think the same thing happened with self-driving cars ~10 years ago. Larry Page and Google's "submarine" marketing convinced investors and CEOs of automakers and tech companies [1] that they were going to become obsolete, and that Google would be taking all that profit. In 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion or so. It se…
In 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion or so. It seems like the whole thing was cancelled in 2023, written off, and the CEO was let go
How much profit is Waymo making now? I'm pretty sure it's $0.