zlacker

>>orph+(OP)
I’ve never understood the value proposition for Copilot.

In terms of difficulty, writing code is maybe on average a two out of ten.

On average, maintaining code you wrote recently is probably a three out of ten in terms of difficulty, and maintaining code somebody else wrote or code from a long time ago probably rises to around a five out of ten.

Debugging misbehaving code is probably a seven out of ten or higher.

GitHub Copilot is optimising the part of the process that was already the easiest, and makes the other parts harder because it moves you from the “I wrote this” path to the “somebody else wrote this” path.

Even during the initial write, it changes the writing process from programming (which is easy) to understanding somebody else’s code to ensure that it’s right before accepting the suggestion (which is much less easy). I just don’t understand how this is a net time/energy savings?

>>mewse+4T
Copilot also optimizes for speed to a degree. It's akin to advanced auto complete. IntelliJ auto-completion is great. As much as it pains to say this, I don't think I will be as effective writing Java in Vim as much as I am with IntelliJ. The key differentiator is the auto complete speed. Copilot I feel is just auto complete on steroids. It may not be perfect yet, but there is definitely a problem it solves.

>>liquid+vX
Have you used it? My experience was quite atrocious. Copilot is not auto complete. It’s nonsense. I attempted to use it continuously for three weeks. I tried because I know someone who built it and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It never prompted me with any code that was useful. It only ever slowed me down and caused me frustration. It’s nothing like Intellisense. It’s just trash.

>>JohnAa+h51
Could you cite an actual specific example? I have a difficult time believing what you are asserting that it provided absolutely no value at any point - it just sounds like a baseless ad hominem attack.

I find that it's fantastic for typescript and JavaScript allowing me to flesh out the completion of basic data object containers class definitions etc. extremely quickly.

If I don't remember the exact parameters that you have to pass into a certain NPM packages methods it will usually auto prompt me and help me complete it without me having to context switch to a browser and look it up.

>>throwa+3P4
https://johnaaronnelson.com/i-cant-anymore-with-copilot/

TLDR; the subtleness of its wrongness destroys my ability to follow my train of thought. I always had to take myself out of my train of thought and evaluate the correctness of the suggestion instead of just writing.

For simple things, intellisense, autocomplete and snippets are far more effective.

For anything more complex, I already know what I want to write.

For exploratory stuff I RTFM

copilot was ineffective at every level for me.