Is it?
Look, I don't care at all if you use copilot; you can use notepad to write your code if that floats your boat; do whatever you want.
What the parent post said is: Copilot is useful; it helps you write code with autocomplete suggestions.
If you think that you don't get productivity gains from an IDE or you're in the 'no IDE makes you more hardcore and better programmer so never program with an IDE' camp, we just have to agree to disagree.
So, I have no interest in that conversation.
...
However, there is a more interesting conversation here we can have:
Given that you have an IDE and use autocomplete:
1) Does Copilot give suggestions are meaningfully useful?
Yes. I honestly can't give you a better answer than that. Yes, it does, it's quite good.
If you don't believe me, try it.
2) Is it better than regular autocomplete?
Look, forget the 'Look, I typed 'process user form and display on UI' and it autocompleted a whole application for me!!' hype.
That's stupid and that's not how it works.
It's an autocomplete. It can autocomplete large chunks, but they're generally rubbish. ...but it does two very interesting things:
- It suggests things that are contextually correct.
For example: even though its rubbish at C++ syntax, it generates valid UPROPERTY and UFUNCTION blocks for unreal code. If I write a `for (y = 0;...` on an array, it generates the associated `for (x = 0;...` when I'm iterating over a 2D array.
If I have a function which takes a pointer like:
> UFvContainerWidget* UFvContainerWidget::ForEquipmentDef(UFvEquipmentDef* EquipmentDef, bool& IsValid)
I press enter and it pops up:
if (!EquipmentDef) {
IsValid = false; <--- WTF!
return nullptr;
}
Sometimes the suggestions don't make sense, and the larger the chunk, the less sense they make.
...but the suggestions that do make sense, make you regret not having it when you don't have it.
Like... regular autocomplete.
It's just a tool; it works very well at small scale autocomplete tasks.
- It can suggest comments from code as well as code from comments.
Literally, I can go above a function and type "/*" and it'll suggest a comment.
These don't always make sense, but often they're pretty close, and it saves me 20 seconds typing.
You have to carefully read these comments, because they tend to get random crap in them, but once again, for short comments its not bad.
Again... it's surprisingly good. Not perfect. It doesn't write your comments for you... but, it's easy to get into the habit of getting it to autocomplete "Returns null if the object is invalid" for you instead of typing it out.
3) Should I use it?
Look, I literally do not care if you do or don't.
What I take issue with is people saying 'it has no value'.
Does autocomplete have a value? Then this has a value.
Saying it has no value is just trolling.
Is it worth the cost?
Well, it's free to use right now.... so, well, you can't beat free right? :)
Longer term, would I pay for it?
Probably (** Personal opinion only: Maybe... you should try it and decide for yourself?)
From copilot "additional telemetry"
> If you use GitHub Copilot, the GitHub Copilot extension/plugin will collect usage information about events generated by interacting with the integrated development environment (IDE). These events include GitHub Copilot performance, features used, and suggestions accepted, modified and accepted, or dismissed. This information may include personal data, including your User Personal Information
So, not really free is it?
> Look, I literally do not care if you do or don't.
> What I take issue with is people saying 'it has no value'.
A bad proposition for most people, because you can't trust it.
Finally we can getting somewhere with this AI stuff....
Seriously wtf, my legal department will have a heart attack if they read this.
In the eyes of most people free == 'something that i don't have to pay for through my bank accounts or other means', as opposed to caring about analytics, telemetry etc.
At least AFAIK that's the common usage and what almost everyone means, though it's definitely worth it to talk in more detail about what hides under that term most of the time!
Over the past decades we went from snail mail to email to instant messaging, each step made it easier to write text to a person. Today, we are writing so many messages to each other that people have started arguing for less instant messaging and less email. Mainly because distractions and frequent context shifts allegedly reduce productivity and happiness.
With Copilot, we have a similar evolution where writing code becomes easier. Could this result in people writing more and more code since it is a smaller effort? What would this do to the developer ecosystem in the long term? Maybe code reviews will take longer because there is more code and because it is more likely for junior developers to introduce bugs using copilot code. Maybe this results in more bugs slipping through code reviews and into production and eventually lower productivity and happiness since more time is spent stress-fully fixing production errors. I can't predict the future, but I do think it's valuable to ask these questions before it's too late.