I actually pay for Copilot, because it is useful, but during the hype phase you had people claiming that it could replace programmers entirely. That is patently not true.
Do you think only experts should be programming? I'm an amateur programmer, and I think copilot could help me a lot with unimportant things, as you said - I even tried to install it but I'm not on some list. I can read code, and have built a few programs - I've hired around 30 different programmers in my life, and the vast majority clearly are copy-pasters-adapters. The way I see it, that happens because programming is still way more complex than it should be - and copilot will help with that. Maybe you are thinking about elite developers or perhaps developers on big companies, but I think it will be greatly benefitial for us low-level coders amateurs, freelancers and fresh people. Am I wrong?
I'm sorry, but I do not get why you're making it personal and attacking my worth as a developer because I am doubtful about what Copilot can do for me.
It is possible to disagree without being rude and insulting.
Imagine that you are a CEO of Microsoft. Someone in your company invented an AI tool that makes an average developer much better at coding (more productive, etc.). As a reminder: you company is a software company that itself employs tens of thousand of developers. What would you do?
a) Downplay the tool. Use it internally to completely crush competition by writing amazing software. License for exorbitant price to a select few partners, who will also crush their competition.
b) Hype it up as much as possible and license it to anyone who's willing to pay $10/month.
I think the rational choice is obvious, which also makes it blatantly obvious that Copilot is not seen as any kind of competitive advantage by Microsoft itself.
> A giant corporation openly steals code from millions of devs and uses to try and automate us and programmers cheer it on.
Actual programmers don't cheer it on. Only modern """programmers""" aka professional CTRL+V pressers, the kinds of people that usually "write" software in languages like javascript by importing a few hundred open source libraries and jamming them together until it vaguely does what they want. Copilot is good for these people because using others' code is all they do anyway, AI just helps them do it more efficiently, and without having to worry about all those pesky licenses.
I don't know about software engineering more generally, but I found it worse than useless for my work in data science (machine learning and ETL pipelines), spitting out code that was so wrong that it couldn't be salvaged. I suspect there's a wide variance in the degree to which Copilot will indeed pay for itself.
But Copilot is not a programmer, Copilot is a program. Slapping the "ML" label on a program doesn't magically abdicate its programmers of all responsibility as much as tech companies over the past decade have tried to convince people otherwise.
Copilot appeals to bad developers, which it's going to learn from. It's been trained on a codebase that is mostly bad and/or outdated. It will produce code that is usually bad and the bad programmer using won't properly review and fix it, so it will never learn how bad it is.
If copilot replaces anything, it will be the legion of failed developers that end up working for Oracle and Comcast currently doing god-knows-what with all their time. Those systems are already giant festering mounds of technical debt; imagine how bad it will get when literally no human has ever seen the code producing that weird bug.
There is no doubt some additional value that copilot or code whisperer brings , though opinions varies wildly. Denying that or denying the tools to developers as a policy will only hurt everyone. I think it is best left to individuals to decide for themselves.
Awesome summary and thanks for trying it for the rest of us!
Copilot sounded terrible in the press release. The idea that a computer is going to pick the right code for you (from comments, no less) is really just completely nuts. The belief that it could be better than human-picked code is really way off.
You bring up a really important point. When you use a tool like Copilot (or copypasta of any kind), you are introducing the additional burden of understanding that other person's code -- which is worse than trying to understand your own code or write something correct from scratch.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Stuff like Copilot makes programming worse and more difficult, not better and easier.
If you want to understand the true state of programming look at how many programmers think it does.
Copilot does seem to be doing some things that programmers want that can be added properly using normal code extensions and look up tables to IDE's.
Why has this not been done before, see above. Programmers are not good at their jobs. They spend their days bike shedding because Copilot might steal code or put in obscure security bugs or be hard to maintain. It does not work, so these are not issues.
Once again an amazing way for the AI industry to control the stupid masses. To believe AI can be racist (this meme has already been applied to Copilot) or steals code is to believe it works. Good on the AI industry to find their niche I guess, stupid people are a big market.
Yeah is it becoming clear enough to some people yet that you can't replace software engineers, let alone really help them, with AI? This is only going to get worse, not better.
Copilot is such a flawed product from the start. It's not even a matter of its ability to write "good" code. The concept is just dumb.
Code is necessarily consumed by people first before it's executed by a computer in a production environment. There are many ways to get a computer to do something, but the approval process by experienced humans is vastly more important than the drafting of it. Software dev is already incredibly cheap and the last place to cut costs.
There is no AI threat other than the one posed by grifters trying to convince you that there is.
If you're a programmer working on non trivial problems you should be happy about copilot. It's just a tool to be more productive. Same with dall-e for artists. They will eliminate unproductive jobs and create new more interesting opportunities. In the long run technological progress is always good
I don't like the idea of CoPilot ... and I'm happy it's not free :)
I'm enjoying reading some comments where people consider how much it's actually worth for their usage. Dollars brings some sober analysis. I'm sure the development and compute have a significant cost, and should be paid for.
I'm doubtful copilot increases productivity by 55% after using it, it saves a lot of typing on easy code but typing speed is never the bottleneck. Unless they have a bunch of positions doing stuff that doesn't require any thinking, which is possible considering they apparently hired hundreds of thousands of people they didn't need.
Copilot (and so on) are simultaneously incredible and not nearly enough.
You cannot ask it to build a complex system and then use the output as-is. It's not enough to replace developer knowledge, but it also inhibits acquiring developer knowledge.
Copilot (and all other AI tools, and non-AI tools) will lead to more developer jobs, not less. The thing holding most industries back at the moment is the lack of available developers at a cost-effective price. Literally every business has an opportunity to automate some process better than it does now, or to make an app to assist a business function, or to drive sales and growth through an application of new tech. The reason why they don't do that is cost and availability of skilled people to do the work. If a new AI tool removes the need to write code entirely and a developer just needs to work out the specifications and requirements then whole industries will start employing more developers.
The part of dev that you get paid to do is not writing the code. It's the part where you define what the code should do. That's where all the value in development resides. Getting AI to write the syntax is 100% upside for the tech industry.
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