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GiddyNaya
328d

Oh boy this may be my best product review yet. I'm totally smitten with GitHub Copilot! I always put off trying it, but I finally gave it a try recently. Man, oh man, once I got a taste of it, there was no going back. This auto-suggest feature is pure sorcery! It throws out complete function suggestions while you type, and it's all based on the context of your code.

Let me tell you if you have never tried it, it's freaking awesome and super handy! I've been learning Python for less than a month, but thanks to the freaking Copilot, my Python skills have skyrocketed like for real. I know this because I tackled a Python project and nailed it. The client was stoked because it worked flawlessly, even though my Python skills are still a bit rough around the edges.

The coolst thing is hw clean my code looks, especially for a beginner. all I have to do to add a comment is type a double slash, and Copilot takes care of the rest. It suggests what should go on each line as I type, and it's scarily accurate.

You know what's wild? On the GitHub page, it claims that Copilot writes 50% of the code. But, dude, for me, it wrote way more than that!

Comments
  • 2
    And that's why Microsoft bought GitHub

    And then the open source fanboys left, thinking Microsoft would steal their code
    They were laughed at

    And now
  • 0
    If this is screenshot of actual code I won't use it because it looks like shit to me - multiple conventions and lot's of possible null pointers

    Better work on basics then produce shit like that because it will cost lot's of money to fix it.

    But well that's why I have a job, because of that shitty code in the picture.
  • 0
    From my experiences with copilot. I yeeted it.
    I kept having to rewrite and clean up what it suggested and it never quite aligned with style and formatting requirements.
    More productive and fun to just do things myself. And at a rare occasion, ask ChatGPT or Cody to roast my shit.
  • 0
    You guys don't sound like you have used it before and I use to sound like that before I tried it. @lotd you mentioned using ChatGPT... Copilot is literally ChatGPT right inside the IDE. You can highlight a code section and start a chat conversation on it. You can also request to fix errors or rewrite and comment the block. It does this automatically, you don;t have to go copy paste code from ChatGPT website.

    @vane... the code on the screenshot looks shitty to you because I'm a python beginner and Copilot uses the developers convention to write new blocks of code. It doesn't force it's coding style or convention on the developer. It learns as you code and suggests new blocks so you code faster. As a beginner in python I also learn faster through it's suggestions. You need to give it a try before the critics.
  • 0
    @jestdotty your assumption is wrong. I have more than 8+ years experience in development in general. Just a new devy in python because a project required it. I used Co-Pilot on there and the assistance was great, the code worked and the project was completed really fast. The output may not be expert level but it was something. That was the whole point of the post.

    I have also tried it on Android Studio environment for kotlin which I am more experienced with. Though the support on the ide is limited but the output is great. Not sure what you guys are on about.
  • 0
    @GiddyNaya right, yeah then copilot is ideal thing to start coding, my problems are not found in the internet so copilot won’t help me. But it’s a nice tool for beginners I believe.

    I only launched starcoder and another one locally to test them. It’s like junior developer hand for someone who needs something quick and dirty and don’t care about how it looks like and don’t mind if it doesn’t work sometimes.

    The hallucinations are what removes me from those products because if I need to double check I won’t sacrifice human life to try to use AI. But maybe at some point some systems that touch human life will start killing peoples because of vectors embedded in them.

    I predict healthcare or administration will be first to produce product of mass destruction using AI but we’ll see.
  • 0
    @GiddyNaya I know Microsoft bought a copy from OpenAI for 10m $ and has expanded it using GitHub for training data and integrated it into their offerings.. Edge, 365, windows & vscode.
    With 3rd party integrations to vim thru LSP.

    I tried it when it was free / trial in early days.
    didn’t see it adding enough value to justify 10$ a month.
    If our budget wasn’t super tight, sure. It would be a nice little boost and save me some time that would eventually accumulate up.
  • 0
    @lotd seems the experience varies from person to person and for me the usecase was worth the hype.
    Imagine the need to create a function that extracts youtube video id from a given youtube link regardless of the url format;

    In most cases I check online to find existing implementations to reuse or ask chatgpt but while using copilot I could just type the function name like “function extractIdFromYoutubeLink…” and it generates the entire code snippet without leaving the ide. This is just one of the many things it could do and my experience was great overall.
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