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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

In general: (1) training ML systems on public data is fair use (2) the output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler. On the training question specifically, you can find OpenAI's position, as submitted to the USPTO here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R... We expect that IP and AI will be an interesting policy discussion around the world in the coming years, and we're eager to…

What about privacy. Does the AI send code to GitHub? This reminds me of Kite

Re: GitHub Copilot

#512

I'm amazed to see how positive the overall response is to this idea. Almost as if programmers think that writing programs is the worst part of the job and ready to be automated away. As someone more aligned with the Dijkstra perspective, this seems to me like one of the single worst ideas I've ever seen in this domain. We already have IDEs and other tools leading to an increase in boilerplate and the acceptance of it…

I think that there's a division between "productive" developers and "meticulous" developers. I know that I'm not the first one. My best days are when I'm removing code. I'm very wary from using frameworks and huge libraries. I learned few frameworks and libraries, I've chosen few that correspond to my style and I'm very careful when it comes to adapting new ones. I prefer to spend a week coding auth layer rather than installing some SaaS connector and call it a day. I prefer to spend few days reading source code and developing my own solution (or just discarding the whole idea) rather than quickly google something and move on.

May be I'm just unprofessional, I don't know. I get my stuff done, may be not as fast, but at least I understand every bit of my code and I rarely have unexpected surprises. I understand that there are other approaches, but I just don't enjoy that way, so I follow mine as long as I can find work. And I actually like things that other people find boring, according to this thread. Withing "business code" - hate it, writing "auth layer" - love it.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#514
I want one-shot learning for refactoring. I.e., show the editor once what transformation I want to perform, and then the editor takes over.

Autocompleting code in general? Sounds like a bad idea, imho.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#515
post #424

For anyone who has this installed, how much of the codebase under development leaves the machine? I am asking from the standpoint of working on proprietary source code. Other than that single issue, which is really a set of issues, it seems to work really well from the videos I've seen.

Reading the their privacy policy: as much as Microsoft wants. So you can probably expect all your codebase to be uploaded.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#516
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation has always produced an increase in jobs so far, although sometimes in a disruptive way. I consider this like the switch from instruction-level programming to compiled languages, a level of abstraction added that buys a large increase in productivity and makes projects affordable that weren’t affordable before. If anything this will probably lead to a boom in development work. But there’s a bunch of low ski…

I feel like the inevitable path will be: 1) AI makes really good code completion to make juniors way more productive. Senior devs benefit as well. 2) AI gets so good that it becomes increasingly hard to get a job as a junior--you just need senior devs to supervise the AI. This creates a talent pipeline shortage and screws over generations that want to become devs, but we find ways to deal with it. 3) Another major ad…

I feel like you're neglecting to mention all the people who need to build and maintain this AI. Cookie cutter business logic will no longer need programmers but there will be more highly skilled jobs to keep building and improving the AI

Re: GitHub Copilot

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

In general: (1) training ML systems on public data is fair use (2) the output belongs to the operator, just like with a compiler. On the training question specifically, you can find OpenAI's position, as submitted to the USPTO here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R... We expect that IP and AI will be an interesting policy discussion around the world in the coming years, and we're eager to…

How do you guarantee it doesn't copy a GPL-ed function line-by-line?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#518
post #191

AI to write code is cool, but you know what’d be even cooler? AI for maintaining, upgrading, improving, and fixing code. After all, devs spend 80%+ of their time doing those things and they’re WAY more painful than writing code imo.

Snyk code is trying to do something similar. It basically uploads your code and compares it to knows vulnerability patterns, it also gives you examples on how to fix those vulnerabilities based on open source project's pull requests.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you say this, but you and most likely the majority of programmers rely on dozens of repositories, packages and libraries with likely zero deep understanding of it (and at the very least haven't read the source code of ) so I don't really understand the difference here. The advantage of something like this is that instead of having to go to stack overflow or any number of reference sites and copy pasta it can j…

I think as our field evolves, more work will be dealing with high level abstractions. There is a massive need for distributed systems design. Companies have big ambitions, but not enough labor to accomplish them. There will still be plenty of low level systems programming work. The field is growing, not shrinking. One impact this may have is that it may make tasks easier and more accessible, which could bring lots of…

Trying to figure out why in the world your comment was down voted.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#520

I'm amazed to see how positive the overall response is to this idea. Almost as if programmers think that writing programs is the worst part of the job and ready to be automated away. As someone more aligned with the Dijkstra perspective, this seems to me like one of the single worst ideas I've ever seen in this domain. We already have IDEs and other tools leading to an increase in boilerplate and the acceptance of it…

You can only solve relatively small problems this way. As I get older, I like the physical act of programming less and less, and just want to solve problems so I can get going on all of my ideas backlog. I've been programming almost every day for the last 38 years. What I really want to do is solve (my) problems.

I really agree with this even though my experience is much smaller than yours.

The biggest place I think it is frustrating to write code is for ML pipelines where you know what you need, but it takes a few hours to wrangle files and pandas until you can run your idea/experiment.

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