Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

austen.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 71 posts

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#11

Post by leetrout »

jcelerier wrote: post #8
skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

> The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster That just really depends on your situation. Here's a case I had just last week: we had artists in residency who suddenly showed up with a new, expensive camera that didn't have any easy to use driver but requires the use of their huge and bulky custom SDK. Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2…

Similar anecdata:

I was writing some automated infra tests with Terraform and Terratest and I wanted to deploy to my infra. My tests are compiled into a binary and shipped to ECS Fargate as an image to run.

Instead of doing docker in docker to pull and push my images and before googling for an existing lib for managing images directly I asked Claude to write code to pull the layer tarballs from docker hub and push them to my ECR. It did so flawlessly and even knew how to correctly auth to dockerhub with their token exchange on the first try.

I glanced at the code and surmised it would have taken me an hour or two to write and test as I read the docs on the APIs.

I am sure there is a lib somewhere that does this but even that would have likely taken more time than the code gen I got.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#12

Post by alterom »

jcelerier wrote: post #8
skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

> The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster That just really depends on your situation. Here's a case I had just last week: we had artists in residency who suddenly showed up with a new, expensive camera that didn't have any easy to use driver but requires the use of their huge and bulky custom SDK. Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2…

Oh, so Claude in this case was a bandaid over a communication problem (the artists not getting the memo about not suddenly showing up with new equipment that you have to support, with no prior discussion, warning, or heads-up).

It absolutely is a game changer.

Now the game for you is to deal with whatever equipment they throw at you, because nobody is going to bother consulting you in advance.

Just use AI, bro.

Good luck next time they show up with gear that Claude can't help you with. Say, because there's no API in the first place, and it's just incompatible the existing flow.

>So the artists would just not be able to do their residency the way they wanted because they only have 3 days on-site to work too.

That, to me, sounds like the good outcome for everyone involved.

It would have been their problem, which they were perfectly capable of solving by suddenly showing up with supported equipment on the job site.

Wanting you to deal with their "suddenly showing up" is not the right thing to want.

If want that, they shouldn't be able to do the residency the way they want.

Saying this as a performing musician: verifying that my gear will work at the venue before the performance is my responsibility, not the sound tech's. Ain't their job to have the right cables or power supplies. I can't fathom showing up with a setup and simply demanding to make it work.

IDK what kind of divas you work with, but what you described is a solid example of a situation when the best tool is saying "no", not using Claude.

The fact that it's a weekly occurrence is an organizational issue, not a software one.

And please — please don't use a chatbot to resolve that one either.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#13

Post by skydhash »

jcelerier wrote: post #8
skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

> The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster That just really depends on your situation. Here's a case I had just last week: we had artists in residency who suddenly showed up with a new, expensive camera that didn't have any easy to use driver but requires the use of their huge and bulky custom SDK. Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2…

> Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2 minutes? From the first go with a basic prompt? Without that it'd have been at least a couple days of development, likely a day just to go through the humongous docs

That's basically what I said. They are example generators. Their creators have not published the source of the data that goes in their training so we can assume that everything that is accessible from the web (and now from places that use their tools) was used.

So if you're already know the domain to provide the right keywords, and can judge the output to see if it's good enough, it's going to be fine. Especially, as you've said, it's something that you're used to do. But do you need the setup mentioned in TFA?

Most software engineering tasks involved more than getting some basic prototype working. After the 80% work done by the prototype, there's the other 80% to have reliable code. With LLMs, you're stuck with the first 80%, and that already require someone experienced to get there.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#14

Post by troupo »

mtkd wrote: post #7
skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

Unnecessarily critical take on a quality write-up Much of the criticism of AI on HN feels driven by devs who have not fully ingested what is going with MCP, tools etc. right now as not looked deeper than making API calls to an LLM

This is the crypto discussion again.

"All our critics are clueless morons who haven't realised the one true meaning of things".

Have you once considered that critics have tried these tools in all these combinations and found them lacking in more ways than one?

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#15

Post by xena »

skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

But skydhash, if you don't nuke the anthill how can you be sure the ants are dead? Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#16

Post by skydhash »

danielbln wrote: post #10
mtkd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unnecessarily critical take on a quality write-up Much of the criticism of AI on HN feels driven by devs who have not fully ingested what is going with MCP, tools etc. right now as not looked deeper than making API calls to an LLM

OP's comment also seems to be firmly stuck in 2023 when you'd prompt ChatGPT or whatever. The fact that LLMs today, when strapped into an agentic harness, can do or help with all of these things (ideation, architecture, use linters, validate code, evaluate outputs, and a million other things) seems to elude them.

Dothey do requirement gatherings? Like talking to stakeholder and getting their input of what the feature should, translating business jargon to domain terms?

No.

Do they do the analysis? Removing specs that conflict with each other, validating what's possible in the technical domain and in the business domain?

No.

Do they help with design? Helping coming up with the changes that impact the current software the least, fitting in the current architecture and be maintainable in the feature.

All they do is pattern matching on your prompt and the weights they have. Not a true debate or weighing options based on the organization context.

Do they help with coding?

A lot if you're already experienced with the codebase and the domain. But that's the easiest part of the job.

Do they help with testing? Coming up with tests plan, writing test code, running them, analysing the output of the various tools and producing a cohesive report of the defects?

I don't know as I haven't seen any demo on that front.

Do they help with maintenance? Taking the same software and making changes to keep it churning on new platforms, through dependencies updates and bug fixes?

No demo so far.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#17

Post by danielbln »

skydhash wrote: post #16
danielbln wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP's comment also seems to be firmly stuck in 2023 when you'd prompt ChatGPT or whatever. The fact that LLMs today, when strapped into an agentic harness, can do or help with all of these things (ideation, architecture, use linters, validate code, evaluate outputs, and a million other things) seems to elude them.

Dothey do requirement gatherings? Like talking to stakeholder and getting their input of what the feature should, translating business jargon to domain terms? No. Do they do the analysis? Removing specs that conflict with each other, validating what's possible in the technical domain and in the business domain? No. Do they help with design? Helping coming up with the changes that impact the current software the least…

No they don't do requirements gathering, they also don't cook my food and wash my clothing. Some things are out of scope for an LLM.

Yes, they can do analysis, identify conflicting specs, etc. especially with a skilled human in the loop

Yes, they help with design, though this works best if the operator has sufficient knowledge.

The LLM can help significantly by walking through the code base, explaining parts of it in variable depth.

Yes, agentic LLMs can easily write tests, run them, validate the output (again, best used with an experienced operator so that anti-patterns are spotted early).

From your posts I gather you have not yet worked with a strong LLM in an agentic harness, which you can think of as almost a general purpose automation solution that can either handle, or heavily support most if not all of your points that you have mentioned.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#18

Post by outofpaper »

alterom wrote: post #12
jcelerier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster That just really depends on your situation. Here's a case I had just last week: we had artists in residency who suddenly showed up with a new, expensive camera that didn't have any easy to use driver but requires the use of their huge and bulky custom SDK. Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2…

Oh, so Claude in this case was a bandaid over a communication problem (the artists not getting the memo about not suddenly showing up with new equipment that you have to support, with no prior discussion, warning, or heads-up). It absolutely is a game changer. Now the game for you is to deal with whatever equipment they throw at you, because nobody is going to bother consulting you in advance. Just use AI, bro. Good…

Chill Winston! Artists in residency are not know for being technical. They are not divas demanding support but individuals who are supposed to have access to resources, space, and support that allows them to develop as artists.

The spaces they are working with often benefit from having talented creatives but this isn't a performance gig we're talking about.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#19

Post by CPLX »

alterom wrote: post #12
jcelerier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster That just really depends on your situation. Here's a case I had just last week: we had artists in residency who suddenly showed up with a new, expensive camera that didn't have any easy to use driver but requires the use of their huge and bulky custom SDK. Claude whipped a basic working c++ proprietary-camera-sdk-to-open-video-sharing-protocol in, what, 2…

Oh, so Claude in this case was a bandaid over a communication problem (the artists not getting the memo about not suddenly showing up with new equipment that you have to support, with no prior discussion, warning, or heads-up). It absolutely is a game changer. Now the game for you is to deal with whatever equipment they throw at you, because nobody is going to bother consulting you in advance. Just use AI, bro. Good…

Excellent point! His approach worked in practice, but it would never work in a theoretical situation where proving a point is more important than just solving the problem, so it's obviously worthless.

Re: Developing with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode and MCP

#20

Post by risyachka »

mtkd wrote: post #7
skydhash wrote: post #4

And again, the most convoluted setup for development with an example that fails to demonstrate why you should adopt such practice. It’s like doing a GDB demo with an hello world program. Or doing Linux From Scratch to show how you can browse the web. The goal of software engineering is not to write code faster. Coding is itself a translation task (and a learning workflow, as you can’t keep everything in your head). W…

Unnecessarily critical take on a quality write-up Much of the criticism of AI on HN feels driven by devs who have not fully ingested what is going with MCP, tools etc. right now as not looked deeper than making API calls to an LLM

>> is going with MCP, tools etc.

all these are just tools. there is nothing more to it. there is no etc.

Post reply on HN