So, has anyone asked Copilot to write a better Copilot yet?
Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#22I'm out almost immediately. The first comment is more text than the code that it produces.
Think of GitHub copilot as StackOverflow on steroids -- a quick way to write code when you're not sure how to achieve what you're trying to do. After all, "How to parse a CSV file in Python" is longer than "csv.reader(file)" but without knowing that "csv.reader" exists, you have no other way but to tell Google what you need.
> Think of GitHub copilot as StackOverflow on steroids
This is how I already think of co-pilot, but these steroids seem to be mostly for prototyping.
SO often have comments and context such as "this works with 98% of browsers", "this isn't recommended, try X instead", "this works but can break library code because it changes the global scope", "this stopped working in version X" etc etc. Context like this can be important to take into account depending on what you're building.
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#23echoing a bunch of comments but this seems sort of like a nightmare. its like the classic “dont use comments that are exactly what the code is doing”. basically you are requiring writing this type of boilerplate comments which are completely useless but are now so the machines can write the code for you. i guess if you could have some tool that auto-removes these comments afterwards it wouldn’t be terrible but i just see this as a way to have people completely forget apis and then not actually be able to find more powerful tools in a language just living on the rails that copilot provides for you. overall seems like a step backwards, especially if newer devs use this as a crutch when jumping in. now we have a generation of devs who dont actually understand the way things work.
i guess stack overflow has a similar problem but at least there people provide documentation, explanation, and helpful links. this just force feeds you some code. i dont see this as a positive movement for our industry as a whole
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#24Just to clarify, it's not really no-code: pseudocode is the new bytecode it would seem and this is just compiling that into usable code. You still need to be able to code and understand what you're doing. You can't just ask simple questions and get complex answers. You still have to be capable of asking complex questions. A common scenario I can think if is where I struggle to remember the name or API of the exact th…
No post body was provided.
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#25echoing a bunch of comments but this seems sort of like a nightmare. its like the classic “dont use comments that are exactly what the code is doing”. basically you are requiring writing this type of boilerplate comments which are completely useless but are now so the machines can write the code for you. i guess if you could have some tool that auto-removes these comments afterwards it wouldn’t be terrible but i just…
No post body was provided.
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of GitHub copilot as StackOverflow on steroids -- a quick way to write code when you're not sure how to achieve what you're trying to do. After all, "How to parse a CSV file in Python" is longer than "csv.reader(file)" but without knowing that "csv.reader" exists, you have no other way but to tell Google what you need.
> Think of GitHub copilot as StackOverflow on steroids This is how I already think of co-pilot, but these steroids seem to be mostly for prototyping. SO often have comments and context such as "this works with 98% of browsers", "this isn't recommended, try X instead", "this works but can break library code because it changes the global scope", "this stopped working in version X" etc etc. Context like this can be impo…
Start a line with
// CAVEATS:
// POTENTIAL ISSUES:
// Above is deprecated. Use below code instead
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#27I'm out almost immediately. The first comment is more text than the code that it produces.
Soon we can all quit our programming jobs and become managers managing copilot by writing copious amount of comments to persuade copilot into generating our software products. Finally no coding required!
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#28Please add "No-Code" and "Toxicity Classifier" to your toxicity dataset.
Banger
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#29Just to clarify, it's not really no-code: pseudocode is the new bytecode it would seem and this is just compiling that into usable code. You still need to be able to code and understand what you're doing. You can't just ask simple questions and get complex answers. You still have to be capable of asking complex questions. A common scenario I can think if is where I struggle to remember the name or API of the exact th…
Note that in part of the process, Copilot was the one asking complex questions when the human programmer didn't know how to proceed.
Copilot adds tremendous value for someone who knows what they want, but not how to do it.
For example, I'm not a great programmer. I'm also a lazy programmer. I had to convert a time to a specific format, in a specific timezone in JS, and I couldn't be bothered looking up documentation for Date.toLocaleTimeString (or is that Date.toLocaleString?).
I wrote a comment outlining exactly what I wanted: // given a date in ISO format (and UTC timezone), return the time in hh:mm AM/PM format (and x timezone) and immediately Copilot generated the code I was after.
Making something easier can definitely mean the difference between doing and not doing — I've taken on a lot of projects I wouldn't have attempted without Copilot.
Re: Building a no-code toxicity classifier by talking to GitHub Copilot
#30I'm out almost immediately. The first comment is more text than the code that it produces.
I think you're missing the point: this is starting to open the door to people who can't code.