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Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

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Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#141

Post by torben-friis »

dcminter wrote: post #131
hyperpape wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dan Luu ( https://danluu.com/wat/ ): > When I joined this company, my team didn't use version control for months and it was a real fight to get everyone to use version control. Although I won that fight, I lost the fight to get people to run a build, let alone run tests, before checking in, so the build is broken multiple times per day. When I mentioned that I thought this was a problem for our productivity, I w…

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.

We might be in the rare case where the current smoke and mirrors fad in leadership happens to be something actually useful.

Let’s not let the smoke and mirrors dictate how we use the tool, but let us also not dismiss the tool just because it’s causing a fad.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#142

Post by ivanjermakov »

benrutter wrote: post #59

Tangential, 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 think it's a lot harder of an OSS project not hosted on GitHub to find contributors and gain traction in general. Network effect, as always.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#143

Post by bflesch »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #9

> During Microsoft's July 30, 2025 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella said GitHub Copilot continued to exhibit strong momentum and had reached 20 million users. Considering that they force it upon users and user cannot disable it, this sounds like a worthless metric. I get an email every month telling me that my Copilot access has been renewed for another month. I'm probably being counted amongst those 20M users. I cou…

I agree. For years we had to read HN posts about why we should not use vanity metrics but now that the corporate tech bros are making money with AI head over fist the user count is the most important metric again.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#144

Post by bgwalter »

chubot wrote: post #110
Rover222 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really your main point, but Tesla self driving is quite incredible, despite what internet clickbait says. They have a clear path to full autonomy with vision-only systems. But yeah, certainly 5-7 years behind the initial schedule. Which I guess was more of your point.

OK, but I think it will end up being more than 25 years behind schedule, taking into account the claims which is what people like Chris Urmson and Bill Gurley already said prior to 2018 (see my sibling comment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono... We're going to end up with complete autonomy Ultimately you'll be able to summon your car anywhere … your car can get to you. I think that within…

It will coincide with the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#145

Post by karlshea »

Rover222 wrote: post #97
chubot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not really your main point, but Tesla self driving is quite incredible, despite what internet clickbait says. They have a clear path to full autonomy with vision-only systems. But yeah, certainly 5-7 years behind the initial schedule. Which I guess was more of your point.

You’re still falling for it. They have a clear path to vision-only autonomy IN THE BAY AREA.

Let’s see it work in Minnesota in the winter where you can’t see lane markings, everything is white, and the camera lenses immediately get covered with road salt spray.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#146

Post by crazygringo »

rossdavidh wrote: post #99
hyperpape wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dan Luu ( https://danluu.com/wat/ ): > When I joined this company, my team didn't use version control for months and it was a real fight to get everyone to use version control. Although I won that fight, I lost the fight to get people to run a build, let alone run tests, before checking in, so the build is broken multiple times per day. When I mentioned that I thought this was a problem for our productivity, I w…

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 about feeling productive with the tools they already know.

It's a hard sell when an application moves a button! People don't like change. Change is always a hard sell to a lot of people, even when it benefits them.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#147

Post by bflesch »

crote wrote: post #68

I'm getting quite sick of how it is forced on you. It's not just yet-another useful feature, they are shoveling it into everything , and giving it the most prominent place possible. I don't want AI getting in the way on Github. I don't want an unremovable AI button in my Office 365 mail client. I don't want to get nagging AI popups every. single. time. I open the GCP console. A year or two I was ambivalent about AI,…

It's mostly about making it easy for users to opt in so they can steal the data. The theoretical AI benefits only appear once the data is stolen (pinky promise).

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#148

Post by DeepYogurt »

sys_64738 wrote: post #107
ants_everywhere wrote: post #6

People have been voluntarily letting Microsoft host their code for years now. And before that they posted their open source code to a centralized site that wasn't open source. This is one of those things where of course it was going to happen. GitHub was VC funded, they were going to either exit to a big company or try to become one. Eventually the bill was going to come due and everyone knew this. You can choose to…

Didn't sourceforge used to be the most friendly open source place then they did something which I forget which got them binned. I think the problem with Github is the low barrier to entry for another open source hosting entity if the typical MICROS~1 action of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish were practiced on GH.

Yep. Sourceforge started injecting ads and malware into (at least) installers that devs made available on the site.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#149

Post by pornel »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #142
benrutter wrote: post #59

Tangential, 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 think it's a lot harder of an OSS project not hosted on GitHub to find contributors and gain traction in general. Network effect, as always.

It depends where your contributors are coming from. For example for Rust, the crates index is the discovery mechanism. Contributors will come to your repo by whatever link you put in your package's metadata. I've split my Rust packages between GitHub and GitLab and don't see a difference in participation.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#150

Post by crazygringo »

dcminter wrote: post #131
hyperpape wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dan Luu ( https://danluu.com/wat/ ): > When I joined this company, my team didn't use version control for months and it was a real fight to get everyone to use version control. Although I won that fight, I lost the fight to get people to run a build, let alone run tests, before checking in, so the build is broken multiple times per day. When I mentioned that I thought this was a problem for our productivity, I w…

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.

> I've never seen that with useful tech tools before

I've seen it all the time. Version control, code review, unit testing, all of these are top-down.

Tech tools like git instead of CVS and Subversion, or Node instead of Java, may be bottom-up. But practices are very much top-down, so I see AI fitting the pattern very well here. It feels very similar to code review in terms of the degree to which it changes developer practices.

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