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1. riezeb+(OP)[view] [source] 2021-10-28 12:49:49
I'm probably going to use it, but isn't it valuable to be a bit skeptical and question what the long-term effects may be?

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.

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