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Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

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Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#11

Post by tehjoker »

bigyikes wrote: post #4
NegativeLatency wrote: post #3

Well if they ever get it right I guess I could always become an electrician (this is not a dig on electricians, it seems like a fun trade, that or under water welding)

Yeah, the real curse is on the programmers who are going to be out of jobs much sooner than people anticipate. All the talk about the low quality of code got me thinking: if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

Correctness is ill defined from a few words in a doc string for anything moderately complex.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#12

Post by SilverRed »

bigyikes wrote: post #4
NegativeLatency wrote: post #3

Well if they ever get it right I guess I could always become an electrician (this is not a dig on electricians, it seems like a fun trade, that or under water welding)

Yeah, the real curse is on the programmers who are going to be out of jobs much sooner than people anticipate. All the talk about the low quality of code got me thinking: if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

If copilot makes programming 10x faster, society will simply demand programs do 10x more.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#15

Post by qbasic_forever »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #3

Well if they ever get it right I guess I could always become an electrician (this is not a dig on electricians, it seems like a fun trade, that or under water welding)

Underwater welding is pretty rough--all of the danger (and expertise required) of deep sea diving plus all of the danger of welding. I have a strong suspicion unless you started from a young age and got trained in the Navy or other industry as an apprentice no one is going to spend the time and money to train you up when you'll only get a few years of good work in for them.

Electricians are good but you're going to get zapped quite a few times in your career. From what I've heard plumbing is where it's at for finding a trade that will let you retire without destroying your body. All of my friends/family who got into construction eventually tried to find their way to plumbing because they saw it was something they could do well into their 40s and 50s without destroying themselves with overly physical work.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#16

Post by toomanyducks »

serenloss wrote: post #9
bigyikes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the real curse is on the programmers who are going to be out of jobs much sooner than people anticipate. All the talk about the low quality of code got me thinking: if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

This seems like a gross simplification. We want factorable code because that helps with DRY. DRY code is more portable and the end product is smaller in size. Also, there's performance considerations. I'll be surprised if there's a tool like copilot anytime soon that can identify need for memoization, for example, and implement it.

But if a human isn't messing with the code, the code doesn't matter - what the bot does to the code matters. And if the bot can handle bad code in a way humans can't, that means something. Code quality will become less important if automated tools, the ones reading and writing the code, don't care about it.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#17

Post by onion2k »

robbedpeter wrote: post #8
bigyikes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the real curse is on the programmers who are going to be out of jobs much sooner than people anticipate. All the talk about the low quality of code got me thinking: if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

Media synthesis means artists of all sorts will take a hit. Gpt means writers, programmers, journalists, and others will take a hit. Prompt engineering and larger models could mean any procedural use of knowledge in any context could be subject to automation. Consumer level robotics, drones, and battery tech is close to a level that manual labor, delivery, and such tasks can be automated. Maybe we should be preparing…

Copilot (and all other AI tools, and non-AI tools) will lead to more developer jobs, not less. The thing holding most industries back at the moment is the lack of available developers at a cost-effective price. Literally every business has an opportunity to automate some process better than it does now, or to make an app to assist a business function, or to drive sales and growth through an application of new tech. The reason why they don't do that is cost and availability of skilled people to do the work. If a new AI tool removes the need to write code entirely and a developer just needs to work out the specifications and requirements then whole industries will start employing more developers.

The part of dev that you get paid to do is not writing the code. It's the part where you define what the code should do. That's where all the value in development resides. Getting AI to write the syntax is 100% upside for the tech industry.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#18

Post by toomanyducks »

foxes wrote: post #10

How does copilot fair in a language where correctness or at least well soundness is more transparent, for example Haskell (eg at least making sure all the types are correct, actual logic on the other hand seems harder, but maybe the declarative style helps)? I imagine in a less strict language you can generate garbage more easily.

Some of the examples given wouldn't even run, as far as I know. Copilot writing Haskell/Rust/ would probably just fail to compile.

I know very, very little about AI, but, like the OP said, it'll reproduce the traits of its training distribution. If the traits don't map on to the domain-specifics of the type ssytem, the traits don't map on, and the code fails.

Generating garbage the compiles is harder, but generating garbage in general is just as easy.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#19

Post by 908B64B197 »

bigyikes wrote: post #4
NegativeLatency wrote: post #3

Well if they ever get it right I guess I could always become an electrician (this is not a dig on electricians, it seems like a fun trade, that or under water welding)

Yeah, the real curse is on the programmers who are going to be out of jobs much sooner than people anticipate. All the talk about the low quality of code got me thinking: if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

> if humans aren’t reading the code, then the only thing that matters is correctness. Correctness may be an easier problem to solve than readability and refactorability.

I suspect it's the opposite: It's rather easy to write code that looks good but isn't exactly correct.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#20

Post by 908B64B197 »

onion2k wrote: post #17
robbedpeter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media synthesis means artists of all sorts will take a hit. Gpt means writers, programmers, journalists, and others will take a hit. Prompt engineering and larger models could mean any procedural use of knowledge in any context could be subject to automation. Consumer level robotics, drones, and battery tech is close to a level that manual labor, delivery, and such tasks can be automated. Maybe we should be preparing…

Copilot (and all other AI tools, and non-AI tools) will lead to more developer jobs, not less. The thing holding most industries back at the moment is the lack of available developers at a cost-effective price. Literally every business has an opportunity to automate some process better than it does now, or to make an app to assist a business function, or to drive sales and growth through an application of new tech. T…

> The part of dev that you get paid to do is not writing the code. It's the part where you define what the code should do. That's where all the value in development resides. Getting AI to write the syntax is 100% upside for the tech industry.

I guess they felt the same ways when the first compilers were introduced. Or interpreters.

> the lack of available developers at a cost-effective price.

There's already developers on the market at an incredibly low price. Good luck getting code that compiles out of them, much less that is correct. I'm afraid we'll see more and more of these, since now they'll be able to cycle through completions and try until it seems to pass all tests.

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