GitHub Copilot is generally available • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#501

Post by tasn » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #496

vbezhenar wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> modern developer stack now involves dozens of companies gunning for a $5-10/month slice of the pie. Can you name most useful ones? So far my only subscription is Idea. I'm considering to try Copilot as I've heard many good things about it.

Ngrok is a must have if you work with webhooks. Free tier is good but paid lets you have a fixed irl rather than having to update it daily.

Shameless plug: www.svix.com/play/

Also gives you a fixed URL and is free, and there are quite a few other free tools out there.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#502

Post by Smaug123 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:17 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #435

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

A developer easily costs $100 an hour. This means that if Copilot saves you more than 360 seconds in a month it’s paid for itself. I’m honestly flabbergasted that anybody would think it isn’t worth $10 a month, despite its many serious flaws.

That calculation works if it doesn't also cost you any time - which by all accounts it does, e.g. in review.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#503

Post by jsharf » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

dannytatom wrote: post #54

I've enjoyed using it for free, but not sure it's worth the $10/mo yet. When it works great, it's a nice-to-have for speeding up development but has yet to give me anything I wouldn't be able to just write myself. And when I wish it would give me the answer to something I don't know how to do, it spits out something very wrong. Also feels kind of icky to train on open source projects and then charge for the output.

They still have to pay for servers and maintain the model itself. A neural network isn't just the data -- training and commercializing it (testing, QA, etc) is a lot of work.

You wouldn't have an issue with someone making money by using open source software (like a website that is hosted on a server running linux).

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#504

Post by ildon » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

Since they've trained it on OSS, it would be fair if they made it free for OSS repositories.

The VS extension could check if the current git repository is open, and if so, it should work without a subscription for that specific repository.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#505

Post by fornowiamhere » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

jmkni wrote: post #306

Hamcha wrote: post #195

I've been using Copilot non-stop on every hobby project I have ever since they've let me in (2021/07/13) and I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo. My experience using it till this day is the following: - It's an amazing all-rounder autocomplete for most boilerplate code. Generally anything that someone who's spent 5 minutes reading the code can do, Copilot can do just as well. - It's terrible if y…

> I've been using Copilot non-stop > I am honestly flabbergasted they think it's worth 10$/mo These two statments seem contradictory to me. Why are you using it 'non-stop' if it isn't even worth $10/month?

It looks like they used it "non-stop" on hobby projects to see what's capable of

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#506

Post by godmode2019 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

I'm learning rust, maybe this will help me googling how to do simple things like split a string and remove white space, while handling errors.

I see this useful for non core languages, where you often need to look up common patterns.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#507

Post by X-Istence » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #376

X-Istence wrote: post #222

As the maintainer of some Python libraries, how do I get my part of that $10/month because Github Copilot was trained using my code...

Where did you learn to write your code, and which open source devs did you compensate for that?

I learned how to write code from books I purchased with cold hard currency. In the before times when dialup modems were the norm resources were scarce, and things like Github Copilot were just a pipe dream.

I have also taught classes and provided mentoring and support to new people up and coming in both programming and infosec. I would argue that as an open source maintainer I am actively contributing back and compensating those other developers. Unlike Github Copilot I am not selling the things I was taught, I am freely making it available to others.

It feels very icky that Github now gets to sell what it learned from my code base, when it has already been shown to replicate code with a 100% match, versus learning how to build on top of ideas or finding novel solutions to problems.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#508

Post by adamckay » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #498

password4321 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> train on open source projects To be specific, the FAQ states: "It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." Some have raised concerns that Copilot violates at least the spirit of many open source licenses, laundering otherwise unusable code by sprinkling magic AI dust... most likely leaving the Copilot user responsibl…

It’s hardly different from reading those projects yourself and learning from them.

Learning from them would be fine, reproducing them as-is without abiding by the license is not and that's where the difference lies.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#509

Post by DubiousPusher » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

Is co-pilot distinctly different from the auto-complete feature of VS2022? I started using that a few months back and it gives far more complex suggestions than VS2019 but I wasn't sure if this was "co-pilot" or not.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#510

Post by Hamcha » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

paskozdilar wrote: post #345

omginternets wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis, but feel like it’s ignoring the elephant in the room: writing code is not the bottleneck in need of optimization. Conceiving the solution is. Any time “saved” through Copilot and it’s ilk is immediately nullified by having to check it’s correctness. From there, the problem is worsened by the Frankensteinesque stitching together of disparate parts that you describe. I can’t i…

Can Copilot write tests? That way it could test its own code and tweak it until it works. Of course, one would then ask how to verify tests. I suppose Copilot could write meta-tests - tests that verify other tests. That way it could test its own tests and tweak them until they work. Of course, one would then ask how to verify meta-tests. I suppose Copilot could write meta-meta-tests - tests that verify meta-tests. Th…

I've used Copilot to help with writing verbose unit tests. It can do it as long as you keep an eye over it (basically like an autocomplete), it definitely cannot produce robust test cases on its own though. If you try to do that, it won't take "meta-tests" to figure out they don't look right.