No matter how complex a program is, and no matter whether it uses techniques sometimes described as "AI" in its implementation, it's not a person. Copilot is just a very complex pipeline from other people's code to your editor, which ignores the license of those other people's code.
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.
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.
I don't use Copilot and know a handful of Fortune 50 companies that won't use it either. Developers do silly things like hard coding credentials when they're testing, as a very basic example, and it's hard to imagine how this is safe.
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.
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.
Yeah i am gonna even judge anyone who says copilot does not make them productive. Like what code could you possibly be writing that copilot is not autocompleting you properly? Yeah if you dont know what to write then copilot cant auto complete you.
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?
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