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GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

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Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#101

Post by thallavajhula »

sixhobbits wrote: post #20
studenthrow3831 wrote: post #3

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…

This is such a well written, thoughtful, and succinct comment. It is people like you and input like this that make HN such a wonderful place. Had OP (of the comment you responded to) posted this on Twitter or Reddit, they would probably have been flooded with FUD-filled non-sense.

This is what the newcomers need. I've been saying something similar to new Software Engineers over the past couple of years and could never put something in a way you did.

Every single sentence is so insightful and to the point. I love it. Thank you so much for this.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#102

Post by troupo »

studenthrow3831 wrote: post #3

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…

No engineer worth their salt (whether junior, mid or senior) should be concerned.And this is a good illustration why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200415

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#103

Post by lostintangent »

sdesol wrote: post #84

Interesting. I don't think the AI code generation will live up to developer expectations, but I do see the value in "project management for developers". The value I see with workspace is not the code generation, but the ability to help developers organize their thoughts.

One of our main goals with Copilot Workspace is to help offer a "thought partner"/rubber duck for developers, and potentially even other members of a software team (as you said, PMs, designers, etc.). And code generation is obviously just one means of helping you think through a problem, along with a fleshed out spec (what are you trying to accomplish?), and plan for how to approach the problem (how might you actually accomplish it?).

And so while we want to help generate code for tasks (e.g. from issue->PR), we also find that it's just super helpful to take an idea and make it more tangible/concrete. And then use that Workspace session to drive a conversation amongst the team, or spark the implementation. Especially since that might only take a couple clicks.

Within the GitHub Next team, I'll often file issues on one of the team's project repos, and then pause for a moment, before realizing I'm actually curious how it might be accomplished. So I'll open it in CW, iterate a bit on the plan, and then either 1) realize it's simple enough to just fix it, or 2) understand more about my intentions and use a shared session to drive a discussion with the team. But in either case, it's pretty nice to give my curiosity the space to progress forward, and also, capitalize on serendipitous learning opportunities.

So while AI-powered code generation is clearly compelling, I agree with you that there are other, more broadly interesting benefits to the idea->code environment that CW is trying to explore. We have a LOT of work to do, but I'm excited about the potential :)

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#104

Post by coolgoose »

studenthrow3831 wrote: post #3

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…

Because the problem is not necessarily coding.

90% of the market is just doing CRUDS, and every year there's a new magical website that will make all websites be built by a WYSIWYG drag and drop editor.

The problem is even defining the correct requirements from the start and iterating them.

My concern is not the death of the market, but more of the amount of not good but workable code that's going to make juniors learning path a lot harder.

As others said, I do think this will help productivity by removing the let's please update the readme, changelog, architecture diagram etc etc part of the codebase, and maybe in some cases actually remove the need to generate boilerplate code all together (why bother when it can be generate on the fly when needed for eg).

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#105

Post by idan »

michaeljx wrote: post #19
studenthrow3831 wrote: post #3

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…

That's because we've been here before. Be it the ERPs of the 90s-00s, the low/no-codes of the 2010s, the SaaS and the chatbots of 2015. There was always hype about automating the job. At the end of the day, most of a programmer's job is understanding the business domain, it's differences and edge cases, and translating those into code. An LLM can do the latter part, the same way a compiler can do high-level java into…

I mean, I don't disagree!

The leading coefficient of these tools successfully getting you to/near the goal is all about clearly articulating the domain and the job to be done

Ergo, it's pretty important to craft experiences that make their core mechanic about that. And that's how Copilot Workspace was designed. The LLM generating the code is in some ways the least interesting part of CW. The effort to understand how the code works, which files must be touched, how to make coordinated changes across the codebase — that's the real challenge tackled here.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#106

Post by 7thpower »

I use Copilot in VS code for work and it is great for auto complete, but the chat experience is very poor compared to tools like Cursor. The inline edits are even worse.

Long story short, is I don’t have a lot of confidence in the product right now.

That being said, I am very optimistic on the product long term and I generally like the vision.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#108

Post by chasd00 »

studenthrow3831 wrote: post #3

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…

it's a new tool that really works well in some ways and falls on its face in others. My advice, learn the tool and how/when to use it and become an expert. You'll be in a better place than many "seniors" and your peers by having a large toolset and knowing each one very well. Also, be careful believing the hype. Some specific cases can make for incredible videos and those are going to be everywhere. Other use cases really show the weaknesses but those demos will be much harder to find.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#109

Post by idan »

roboyoshi wrote: post #90
idan wrote: post #77

Hello! GitHub Next here, happy to answer questions and unpack how we think about AI tools for developers (spoiler: it's less about codegen and more about helping with the rest of the dev cycle — building an understanding of how the system works, clearly specifying how it should change, etc)

Interesting stuff! I've been trying ollama/gpt + continue.dev and copilot in VSCode for a bit now and the chat-style assistant is a huge plus. Especially in DevOps (my main work) the codegen is rather unhelpful, but the ability to let LLMs explain some sections and help in rubber-ducking is huge. I see that a good output requires a good input (prompt). How does copilot workspace determine a good input for the prompt?…

Well, that's basically the heart of Copilot Workspace! The whole UX is structured to make it easy for the human to steer.

- Alter the "current" bullet points in the spec to correct the AI's understanding of the system today - Alter the "proposed" bullet points in the spec to correct the AI's understanding of what SHOULD be - Alter files/bullets in the plan in order to correct the AI's understanding of how to go from current to proposed.

That said, I think there's definitely a future where we might want to explore how we nudge humans into better issue-writing habits! A well-specified issue is as important to other humans as it is to AI. And "well-specified" is not about "more", it's about clarity. Having the right level of detail, clear articulation of what success means, etc.

Re: GitHub Copilot Workspace: Technical Preview

#110

Post by idan »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #87
sdesol wrote: post #84

Interesting. I don't think the AI code generation will live up to developer expectations, but I do see the value in "project management for developers". The value I see with workspace is not the code generation, but the ability to help developers organize their thoughts.

The real problem is a large part of the enormous hype train is investors thinking they can replace talented engineers w/ AI. That's fundamentally doomed for failure. What AI can really do well is take an already competent engineer and suddenly get rid of a lot of the annoying tedium they had to deal with. Whether it's writing boilerplate, doing basic project management, organizing brain dumps/brainstorming, etc.

Bingo.
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