GitHub CoPilot AI Coding -- Microsoft's Big Mistake?

[@gamefromscratch]

Link gamefromscratch.com/github-copilot-released/

[@holdthetruthhostage]

I wouldn't say it's a problem A.I. doesn't have the greed of man, isn't alive, & seek to conquer

[@Ares9323]

I've been using it since November 2021, it's useful but I wouldn't pay for it. Sometimes it saves you a lot of time but other times it's harder to detect the Copilot errors than writing the code from scratch 😅

[@magokstad769]

I feel the same way. After a while, I've mostly been turning it off because i feel like it gets more in the way than anything else.

[@sebastienltze2150]

Same, since I got the notification to pay for it.., I'm like heh, it's creepy and funny at once, but would never pay for that!

[@ThePC007]

I honestly found it really useful myself, but I really wish its VS Code implementation wasn't so incredibly slow. It's frustrating to wait for an answer to be generated, only for it to be wrong.

[@DonChups]

It feels like debugging someone else's code on top of your own.

[@sebastienltze2150]

@@DonChups so true

[@sebastienltze2150]

We've used that in beta since January... we called it the "excited intern", as its the quality of an excited intern first day as a developper :)

[@theohallenius8882]

Only 10000x faster than any senior developer xD

[@sebastienltze2150]

​@@theohallenius8882 we use it for unreal engine and in c++, it's as reliable as a junior developer who ate mushrooms :)

[@Ares9323]

@@sebastienltze2150 I use it with unreal engine and I definitely agree 🤣

[@John-mj1kk]

Depends on the use case. It's quite rusty with Rust, but a great tool nonetheless. It's expected that the languages with the fewest open source resources would have the lowest quality. With TypeScript, it is extremely accurate.

[@quelchx]

A bad developer with this tool can wreck havoc within a codebase. A good developer can use this tool to turn a shitty codebase into a decent one.

[@magokstad769]

I used to be slightly scared of Copilot and what it would mean for the future of programming, but after using it for a while, i see it as nothing more than a good tool. I wouldn't say Copilot is a must have (at least not yet) since it really depends on what you code: I've found it useful when using API's and Libraries as it is ridiculously good at understanding them and what they do. I made a python project with the Spotify API sending and receiving JSON data, and as i was typing the name of functions like "make_new_playlist()", Copilot kicked in and filled in the rest of the code, while teaching me how to use the API in the process. For these cases, it can be very useful. I could see Copilot being good for game development (though i have not tried yet) since you could describe a function you wouldn't know how to implement, and see / test if the code it generated is what you wanted, thereby learning the engine as you go, rather than googling and reading documentation for hours. It is also very good at making data structures (at least in C). You can start typing out a struct, and a definition for each function you want for that data structure and it will pretty much make the whole thing for you. Just describing what i want one function at a time, you can code a C linked-list in 2 minutes. However, actual programming knowledge is needed to make good use out of this as copilot did not always free unused memory (this would lead to memory leaks). When it comes to range of programming languages, it pretty much understands and works well in most, but not all programming languages. I've not gotten HTML nor LaTeX to work, but it kind of makes sense since these are markup languages, not procedural programming languages. As of today, i don't use copilot much. You can choose to turn it off for certain languages, and I've found myself turning of copilot for most of my most used programming languages as i found it constantly trying to fill in parts of code i wanted to do myself, but there are probably settings to make it less intrusive, but i haven't felt the itch to turn it on again. TL;DR : Very good tool which shines the brightest when you are working with projects, languages and functions outside your comfort zone, can be intrusive when working on projects you feel you have more control over, NOT a must have (yet).

[@saeedbarari2207]

Can't agree with your choice saying that it's not useful for a language u have control over. It's like having a remote for turning off lights. U can do it yourself, sure, not hard, but the remote can just make your work easier. Just don't use it's long suggestions if u r sure u can write it yourself faster than correcting copilot's mistakes . But for short suggestion, like some (a, b) = (b,a) , well, why not? I mean it's just some milliseconds, and it saves u some seconds. So definitely not helping u big time, but it's still useful... But there's this worry that what if it gets too common for people to use, that non-AI programming becomes something like reading newspaper in the modern day of internet and screens at the palm of your hands... If if really did become a new norm, programming will not be as fun anymore :( That's my most concern. For us to be overrun by AI and lose our interest in the industry... Imagine the interviewer asking u "use this AI project in a way that it fills > 60% of your code" and you should write good comments and good function names for it to pass... That's gonna be a sad future

I don't have an issue with tools that help us write code faster. But I do have an issue with stealing other programmer's work. If copilot just trained on some licensed code and then used the training to create new code I'd be supper happy, but copilot taking someone else's work line by line and ignoring the license is not creating something new, it's stealing with a shitty legal filter.

[@saeedbarari2207]

@ yeah. and im really surprized why removing the licensed codes from the train models should be such a hard task for them... maybe it has been made this way by choice

[@ThePC007]

“I've not gotten HTML nor LaTeX to work, but it kind of makes sense since these are markup languages, not procedural programming languages.” I've literally used it for my homework assignments in markdown, and it worked somewhat fine. Many equations it generated looked right at first glance but were BS when I double-checked them, but it did save me quite a bit of typing effort, especially when dealing with matrices.

[@mitchellquinn]

Interesting, thank you for the detail. While I was watching the video my first impression was that it'd be good for getting familiar with new languages / APIs, etc, so nice to know that's the case. Unfortunately, for me, and I know this sounds ridiculous, it's outside of my budget.

[@Clawthorne]

If it was free and more open about what they do with it, I would be fine with it. But to pay monthly for something that will be a telemetry privacy nightmare? No thank you. I just know that someday soon, Microsoft will make an "Oops" press release about how it turns out that the CoPilot telemetry uploaded your entire project's codebase for "training purposes". You can either charge for it, and use that money to make sure it's trained only on permissive license code and have little to no telemetry. Or you can make it free with telemetry and train it on "everything". Not both. Absolutely not both you greedy, greedy people.

[@grantwilliams630]

You can just turn off code snippet telemetry. It will only look at how often you accept or reject recommendations.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

It's got GitHub to train on, it doesn't need telemetry to "steal your code"

[@grantwilliams630]

@@SimonBuchanNz it doesn’t use private repositories

[@hamcha]

Go is far from being unpopular and only used at Google, it's a lot of my day job and since most popular devops tools (Docker/Kubernetes/Helm/Grafana/Prometheus/Rancher/Traefik/CoreDNS/etc) are all in Go, it keeps proliferating in devops with no sign of stopping. Lots of companies I follow have Golang backends, including big Google rivals like Cloudflare and Twitch. For the "copied GPL code", they added a filter you can turn on to prevent it from pasting public code (assuming the filter is good enough to catch it). If you only let Copilot work as a smarter autocomplete it's actually incredibly nice. Anything past 3/4 lines of code is asking for trouble (especially since it starts writing code with issues hard to catch at a glimpse). I've enjoyed it using it during the closed beta but 10$/mo while not really adressing the issues brought up since the original announcement (which means I still cannot even ask my workplace to let me use it at work, which is where my money comes from) leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I stopped using it after yesterday.

[@RobLang]

I've found it of limited use but then I've been coding since 1986. The MS legal department is larger than your suspicions, that's tied down. Takedowns will be like DMCA - report a problem and it's removed. I also disagree with your assertion that the training set will fall foul of bad actors. They will already be filtering and training on a subset. I agree that it's the future. I remember people losing their minds over intellisense in a similar way - especially over lower level languages suggesting a function for which there was a better way. Intellisense is now a standard and I think copilot-like tools will be that too. The end goal is conversational programming where the code isn't important but the way the business problem is described is.

[@diliupg]

People like you are rare nowadays. I'd like to see you sit side by side with a modern day coder and scare the living daylights out of him with your coding expertise. Respect!

[@mandisaw]

@@diliupg Not actually rare - it's just that most shops have poor retention & don't hire older devs. There are plenty of us if you look :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I wonder how takedowns will work. So an infringement is reported, what happens if the infringing code has already been copied a thousand times? Will those copies be automatically deleted? Leaving developers scratching their heads over why a big chunk of code from yesterday is no longer there today?

[@stints]

In two more generations of this type of work, we'll be seeing this as a must have.

[@malorum]

Hold onto your papers!

[@mandisaw]

More like mgmt will see this as a useful tool to hire copypasta interns, instead of experienced devs. Makes sense that so much of the code is in beginner-friendly languages & open-source domains, since those make up a lot of tutorials & public repos.

[@stints]

@@mandisaw That's four, maybe five, generations away.

[@mandisaw]

@@stints Maybe? Depends on how aggressively MSFT markets it, especially to places with loads of consultants doing grunt work. I could see some shops snapping this up, bad code and all.

[@stints]

@@mandisaw This is bad code, the one I'm talking about won't be. We're getting close accept it.

[@draken5379]

Funny enough the most useful feature of co-pilot is more its contextual learning of your code. It pretty much learns your code base and all its suggestions are contextually correct. Can really speed up your productivity if you are writing a lot of things that are similar, but not similar enough that you would be just extracting the functionality and reusing it etc Like a super simple example, is lets say you are setting up database and you normally always have some columns that are kind of unique to your project, but are not some 'common' thing you would find in every github repo etc, it normally auto fills them in with the correct context. Its also insanely good at writing error messages. It just looks at your code and produces the correct error. Lets say you have something like " if website.setup != true', it will auto produce however your errors are handled in your application, and the error message will be along the lines of "The website is not setup".

[@johnfoe3574]

I am not surprised that microsoft is willing to ignore copyright when it suits them...

[@nialltracey2599]

I'm dealing with a few academic misconduct cases at the moment, and up to now I've found mistakes to be something of a Turing test for cheating. They either mark out the code as being the work of a beginner (therefore not cheating) or they show that the code was multi-author (and the mistakes were introduced by the student who didn't know how to code and couldn't understand the code he was working from). I could see a GPT-style code-from-text as being a problem, but I think right now a near-beginner student isn't going to be able to do anything with this, because their code won't give enough information to the AI, and they won't be able to evaluate whether the output code is correct. I'm not concerned that it will make cheating harder to detect in the short term, as the students who use it are going to be pretty obvious. Daft for them to give it free to students, though. That said, there's a huge problem that it's getting harder and harder to get students to walk through the basics of computer programming, as it's so easy to take shortcuts. It's leaving a whole layer of "magic" in computing. I think we're probably going to see a significant shrinkage in the field of computer science in favour of programming and software dev courses, because that's the only area you can really get most of the students to do.

[@ThePC007]

Do you not teach your students to write proper unit tests? Figuring out that a properly unit-tested code isn't correct shouldn't be _that_ difficult, even for a beginner.

[@nialltracey2599]

@@ThePC007 Unit testing GUIs is non-trivial....

[@ThePC007]

@@nialltracey2599 True, but GUIs are fairly easy to play around with and find bugs that way. I find it somewhat unlikely that Copilot would introduce bugs that are so difficult to replicate that you wouldn't notice them when doing a little bit of stress testing.

[@nialltracey2599]

@@ThePC007 my students submit code with bugs. Whether that's down to a lack of testing or inability to fix them isn't clear (and I'm speaking specifically about students who are underperforming, failing to attend regularly and already under suspicion of academic misconduct.)

[@AntiCookieMonster]

What do you mean 'daft for them to give it free to students'? Getting students used to solving problems using your tools is tried and tested way MS acquires foothold on dev market.

[@TheHronar]

You can also continue using Copilot for 2 months if you participated in the technical preview.

[@geekworthy7938]

They kept the code! Telemetry says this is the answer!!! So, basically the users who are paying to use are actually developers of the product. 🤔

[@disruptive_innovator]

as they say, if there is a free to use service then you are the product.

[@perrylets]

@@disruptive_innovator it is not free. And you are not developing. The Microsoft team that handles its products that target developers don't make money from the telemetry.

[@disruptive_innovator]

@@perrylets I was referring to where they sourced their data, Github, the FREE SERVICE. And you say I am not developing? Very interesting of you, how do you know?

[@xdjrunner]

@@disruptive_innovator Microsoft owns Github

[@saeedbarari2207]

@@disruptive_innovator lol. He's saying you're not developing anything, don't get excited, he's right . You're not developing, you're just training the AI as u take advantage of it's uses

[@theohallenius8882]

I've been using it since last year, have to say very impressive and very useful if you're doing repetitive stuff, it is really good of filling in the obvious blanks. Despite not liking the pricing very much I believe I'll keep purchasing it after my trial expires in September.

[@dariusz.9119]

Whether we like it or not, one way or another, this kind of project is the future of programming

[@theastuteangler]

and the future of humanity is collapse

[@K3dev]

I have been using it for a long time and I signed up for the subscription, because I learned how to take advantage of copilot, but if you don't know how to take advantage of it it could be annoying. If you just test it in an empty project, it will copy code from other places, but if you have a big project it knows how your project is, what tools is using and even understand your own helper functions and make use of it.

[@jebuskmiest]

ah nice, paying and training the bery service that will eventually -replace you

[@joshh.5776]

I have been working with it for about 5-6 month with mostly C# and Unity and legal issues aside it's amazing. It does not replace knowing how to program or knowing what you're doing in general but it makes me FAST. The code I am producing with it is usually cleaner since I use more comments and the thing is not lazy so it does things the proper way if that fits the style of the document. It tries to guess what realistically will come next given the code that is above. So if your code is shit, it will realistically guess that your code continues shitty. You can use this however in cool ways like writing a method and then writing a comment saying "//optimized allocation free version of the above method" And it usually does a pretty good job of making a version that does the same but better. I went into this thinking: "it's fun but I would not be paying for this". But I totally would now. I hope they figure out the legal and other issues out. I think this is very much the future since it basically is a junior programmer for 10$ a month.

[@sirpalee]

The product is not copilot itself, but the hundreds of thousands of coders who will train copilot to become a better coder by using it.

[@psyboyo]

So that's why Microsoft bought GitHub. Also that's why I never used it with my personal work, unless in a team environment that required it.

[@brodriguez11000]

It's Open-source, one doesn't need to "buy" anything to see it.

[@moon-vf3uj]

@@brodriguez11000 Well, yes, but no. Github rate-limits you if you start doing too many searches or look through search result pages too quickly. So unless there is a way to bypass that, you won't be able to get anywhere near the amount of data needed to make your own copilot clone.

[@fernandoz6329]

I usually work solving project issues, no matter what language I need, so Javascript, C#, PHP, Python, Java, whatever is needed is ok. I've been using Copilot for few months now and it has been extremely helpful, specially if I have to start a project from scratch and I have to solve very specific language needs. But when the project grows, I seldom use it. So specifically in my case, I don't use it often, and I think is cheap is you intend to use ONE tool, and expensive considering the extensive amount I'm currently using and also there are a lot alternatives tools are out there.

[@vladyslavkolodka6387]

Well, I tried it for some time with C#. Although sometimes its code completions are valid I can't get rid of the feeling that it is just like "singing a song without understanding what it is about". It doesn't understand the context in most situations, and sometimes it gives the code from PHP/Python/etc in my C# projects. I don't think it is worth 10$ per month. Also, I don't think it can be used on projects under NDA. As I understand, it will send my file/class to google for analysis in order to give me a code completion based on the context

[@isaactrevino8516]

I've used GitHub copilot since day one, and to be honest I am incredibly dependent on it now. Not because I'm a lazy programmer but instead speeds up my coding time significantly, I'd even say doubling it.

[@theohallenius8882]

99.99% programmers are lazy, that's why we program, to keep being lazy xD

[@erie7452]

@@theohallenius8882 lmao true

[@John-mj1kk]

@@theohallenius8882 Thought of something to refute what you said, but it's true. Operating systems are created solely to streamline tedious tasks and increase productivity, which is the foundation of pretty much everything.

[@jimmiejohnsson2272]

Got a feeling this is sort of the equivalent of an automated copy and paste from stack overflow solutions. A lot of the times it will be just fine, but when you need to understand the details of whats going on it'll create problems for you. I've seen enough code generated by junior devs to feel pretty unsure if I would like to release them on something like this. It'll probably allow you to run real fast in the begining but as your solution need to support growing complexity and amount of data this approach will come back to bite you in the ass. On the other hand though I might be wrong, it will be interesting to see where this ends up.

[@kephalosmusic]

a thought experiment: an AI is let loose on 100,000 copyrighted cat photos and it learns to generate cat pics. Most of these ML methods CANNOT tell you which of the original cat photos influenced the generated one. So is the AI generating a derivative work of 100,000 copyrighted cat photos? The photo is 100% unique after all, much like a painter painting a canvas. If the AI is found guilty of copyright infringement, couldn't a hypothetical painter exist who, in their entire life, has only seen the same 100,00 cat photos, and could the painter be accused of the same copyright infringement as the AI?

[@josh_flash]

I believe that would fall under fair use. The majority of outputs from trained AI will likely fall under fair use, regardless of the medium.

[@SerBallister]

@@josh_flash Interesting legal quandry, could I feed an AI trade secrets, copyrighted source code and such and then use whatever it produces, like some kind of "clean room reverse engineering" ? Does the definition of a derivative not apply here ?

[@Mempler]

Wasn't there a claw within the ToS that GitHub is allowed to use open source projects regarding of its license to improve its platform? This includes copilot as it is a GitHub product.

[@StiekemeHenk]

Part of the telemetry can be disabled when you sign up, specifically using your own code to improve copilot.

[@betterlifeexe4378]

It works with c# as well, I used it a little in early access. It's good at vanilla, high-use cases. It does not have an understanding of unique code. I feel like what these AIs need is a LARGE menu of templates. If the programmer was given a diverse set of options for high level organization, not only would this prompt faster dev times, it would also result in more prototypical code, making it easier for the AI to adjust the code as the programmer customizes elements within the template. This is because when using a custom high-level approach, the AI has fewer landmarks to tell what a new method or subclass or field might have to do with the unfamiliar structure it is entered in. Template programming makes a lot of sense anyways in my opinion. If everything looks the same throughout a large code body, it can be easier to manage for us humans as well.

[@Kinos141]

In terms of languages, it depends on the languages stored in github, so naturally python will have the most co-pilot entries, while PowerShell will have a ton less. Still works with PowerShell.

[@KANDYMANIAC]

Hmmmmm… from my knowledge on how language models work what it generates can’t be thought of as plagiarism. How close to the code examples does copilot actually replicate? Code more so than spoken language are bound by stricter rules so code looking like other code is more possible. But how many examples of copied code exist?

[@gizzmoog4195]

if it replicates solutions 1 to 1 then it is plagiarism. And if it's trained on github code, then it's likley to reproduce such code snippets. The general question: Is it right to train AI models on all kind of information and knowledge on the web? Should the authors and creators of these information be financial compensated, because they created this knowledge in the first place? My opinion on text generating AI-Models: They are stealing the knowledge of the world to make money with it. Without this knowledge, there would no AI-Model. So they should pay the authors.

[@jeanlasalle2351]

I'm using it and it seems to just be an advanced autocompleter : it works very well if you use it as one. It seems to learn from your own code and as such seems to read my mind sometimes. For example, it is incredibly useful when I have to print all elements of a struct as I just have to write the first printf and then it autocompletes the rest with the same format and convention. However, it terribly fails on complex tasks or even simple algorithms. It works well on famous ones like the tower of Hanoi but it can't generate a list of random emails for instance

[@jeanlasalle2351]

So I don't think it copies code unless if you ask for a finished algorithm/solution

[@guy_th18]

even if it doesn't directly plagiarize, its honestly unfair that the contributions of thousands of FOSS developers who licensed their code under GPL (with the intent of barring proprietary software developers from using their work) is now being used to develop proprietary software. without all these contributions, the tool wouldn't work anywhere near as well as it does now. it's a violation of developer trust and goes against the spirit of open source that GitHub should support

[@jeanlasalle2351]

@@guy_th18 Yes, while the tool is quite useful, it is true that the way they developed it is unethical and taking advantage that it is currently a legal grey area...

[@L0PREZ]

I have been using copilot a little for a few months and it did save me some googling at times but I found myself turning it off becuase it is pretty intrusive at times.

[@Greedygoblingames]

It even works with GLSL! Been using it to help me write GPU shaders.

[@josh_flash]

Ohh this is cool! I'm definitely going to have to try that!

[@Greedygoblingames]

@@josh_flash I mean don't get too excited, it's not going to write an amazing shader for you but it has helped when I needed certain helper functions.

[@Flat_Erik]

i am very happy that you seem to have slowed down your talking speed be ~5% :). this is absolutely unironic, i think this video is at the perfect talking speed. And i like to see this channel diving into general IT a little and not only gamedev and assets.

[@tiagotiagot]

Something similar can also be done locally using GPT-J if you got a beefy NVidia card; I haven't used it much, but it does seem to at least produce results in the right ballpark in the few times I tried.

[@aredrih6723]

1:16 I might be rusted in my sql but isn't `select foo, count(foo)... ` always invalid? You're aggregating a value _and_ returning it.

[@mandisaw]

You'd do it to label the count() - usually there'll be a group by clause later.

[@aredrih6723]

@@mandisaw So I just checked on mariadb and observed the following: - labelling the count would be `count(foo) as label` or `count(foo) label`. The ai did `foo, count(foo) ` which is different. - doing a similar request (with both selecting and aggregating) seem to set the field to the first value. That the first time I heard of this behaviour and the consensus seems to be that it's not valid ANSI sql. So the request is valid but seems to be a behaviour specific to at least mysql. Still, if the query is DBMS specific, autocompleting code with it seems like a bad idea.

[@mandisaw]

@@aredrih6723 "count() as label" is just setting an alias for that count field. It doesn't tell you what field-value applies to the count. Say you had a 1-column table of fruits: SELECT fruitname, count(*) as numfruits FROM table GROUP BY fruitname would give you a 2-column table of each fruit (by name) and how many of them are in the list. That's just a generic SQL query, nothing system-specific.

[@aredrih6723]

@@mandisaw So, I tried it around in postgresql: - in the context of your example doing a `count(*) ` or `count(fruitname) ` yield the same result. I expected an error or 1 but I stand corrected. - doing a `select fruitname, count(fruitname) ` without `group by fruitname` yield an error in postgres (it doesn't in mariadb) So bottom line, I was wrong in assuming `select foo, count(foo) ` was invalid sql, it works in both mariadb and postgres. Not sure it would work on database like oracle entrepreneurs db but 2 popular db are supported which is good enough.

[@mandisaw]

@@aredrih6723 It's standard, and basic, it'll work in SQL Server, Oracle, whatever. As for why it won't work without the "group by" in a Relational DB, count() is an aggregate function - once you've got an aggregate query, you're saying "give me these values/calculations when [grouped field] matches". Adding a standalone field that isn't aggregated, and isn't a grouped-field [in the group by clause] leaves unspecified how that field should be retrieved/calculated - what is the thing to be "matched", basically. Some DBs are more lenient [read: non-relational], and will basically just retrieve whatever you want, whether it's correct, optimal, or causes a bunch of expensive cross-joins on the back-end. Postgres ain't that 😅

[@ex3c__dev]

Go is actually amazing for creating backends. So I get why it's there. Will refuse using copilot though. I will not pay for a product and give a company more training data to some day replace my job lol

[@nialltracey2599]

I think Mike's surprise was based on the low volume of available source code to analyse. I suspect its strength in Go is derived from its broad understanding of C-likes, and Go being essentially a constrained variant of C.

[@ex3c__dev]

@@nialltracey2599 maybe. According to GitHut 2 it's amongst the top 5 most popular languages since 2018. I just think go gets underestimated.

[@KeinNiemand]

3:32 At least for me there was a smalllink underneth the option to skip setting up payment until later so I didn't had to sign up for a year.

[@Stevesteacher]

I've used it for a while, it's nice to have, but $100 is a bit expensive for the little it has done for me (I mainly used it to write descriptive comments for me, since I couldn't be bothered to explain what my code does XD)

[@YomiTosh]

Copilot shows up in a completion menu in Neovim (Lunarvim with plugins) and I find this implementation to be a lot better than having the initial suggestion show up in greyed out text in front of the cursor. It works out of the way of my coding but is available to give me mostly useful suggestions or ideas. Especially when I blank out

[@astronautadomestico1343]

I've been using it since it came out, I'm still finishing my college and man.... you sure can drop a SQL query activity comented in there and it will get at least 80% of it right, specially after your correct it in the first 2 or 3 questions. It is incredibly strong

[@StiekemeHenk]

I do use copilot for school, it doesn't feel like cheating as I still need to understand, read and write my own code, however if I don't know something, copilot is faster than Google.

[@bunnybreaker]

I must admit I'm really annoyed that it's a paid product. I have been using the beta and had no idea it was going to turn into a paid service. The fact that they trawled open source code to train the models is a fuckery.

[@WillEhrendreich]

So, I've just been starting to use it in earnest today, and it's.. Unbelievable. Like.. What it picks up from the context of a single file is absolutely astounding. It predicted the what I was going to write, dead on. This is so freaking nice. What it's really going to do is help with those syntax questions that you'd go have to Google to try and find something that works, because you can't quite remember how you're supposed to do something or whatever. It's not like you can really write a whole program like this, in that, you still have to know what you are doing, it won't make software architecture or design obsolete, those things are just to broad and nuanced to be taken over by an ai, because it's really getting into philosophy of information control and all that. But for the particulars and drudgery of implementation details, yeah, this is badass.

[@nickelpence]

I used it for my programming courses, mainly out of laziness, especially when it came to write tests, which often were very repetitive, and I needed to change only a few things, but now I'm on the edge in whether to use it (student), or ignore it completely, and go the much better way of writing my code myself (i.e, rewriting code Ifind online :-) )

[@akzork]

No, it's not a mistake. CoPilot is impressive at first glance. But lacks in many ways. No need to be scared or something. Also, AI future. Like it or not.

[@sedatalizevit51]

To be honest, I would not pay just for the copilot. However , if Microsoft create someting like "Dev Pass" which contains Copilot with other products like codespaces or azure , i can think to pay with a logical price.

[@havocthehobbit]

Go lang is pretty popular among system admins that can program or people who want to program low resource and mem programs fast without the complexity that any of the c based languages bring and or the insecure and resource heavyness that scripting or non compiled languages bring . So i can understand why go lang is in there . languages . Not great for GUIs that are not web based or terminal based but pretty good if yoi care about server management.

[@Kim-e4g4w]

How is this CoPilot know to not pass along let us say password and such? Sometimes when building server related functions I would sometimes write SQL queries in C# and just scaffold the function with a SQL server connection data (IP address, username, password etc.). If CoPilot is passing this along to others then it have F*#ked up. Okay I know one shouldn't write password directly into the code but sometimes its just faster while building it.

[@mandisaw]

Beginner mistake - your credentials shouldn't be checked into your repo, "fast" or not.

[@rizkitopek4193]

waiting for Mental Outlaw commentary about this topic

[@ThePC007]

That would certainly be interesting.

[@Waterwater743]

What are your opinions on tabnine?

[@shadamethyst1258]

Oh, I've already seen copilot getting used by students in practical coding sessions at my school. I am very doubtful that it will have a positive impact on the learning process.

[@octartis]

I feel like this could be a perfect vector for exploits

[@pixly-r6b]

It's not smart in any way but it make development faster at least with python and javascript, there are things I know to do but don't remember all the syntax and don't want to Google them. If you are developing like a website it's certainly useful tool but for something that requires you to think and use too munch logic, if you depend on copilot it will lead you to a wrong direction for sure

[@abhiseckdev]

What's the theme you are using?

[@dulansudasinghe868]

The other issue I have is, some one else making money from someone else's code without compensating them. Like all mobile stores. Instead of charging for the storing, charging for internal transactions. Unless the authorities regulate this issue it will keep happening. For instance apple charges developers a yearly subscription. If they are charging that then they shouldn't have the right to further charges. If they are not charging that they should only charge for direct purchases and ensure there is no free software in the system. And not charge on the in app purchases. and should be less than a certain threshold not 30%. This means they are profiting from others work. Even google. Steam etc. I guess this is CAPITALISM in a nut shell. If everybody takes a cut from the top of the service , stores, third party vendors, service providers, governments, then the vendor has to up the sales price to ensure profit which means the customer has to dole out more cash. I don't know ..., seems to be vicious cycle. Just saying.

[@Fighter05]

I could see something like this reducing the numbers of software engineering hours from a business perspective. But it will never replace a human developer. Take the hypothetical example of an AI creating music. Its able to comb through all the music humanity has created, but it will never understand what makes good music sound good. But a human musician might be able to use the tool to create certain parts of a melody or rhythm and tweak them so they actually sound good. The AI created sounds would then allow the musician to develop say an entire album faster then it would be if this musician had created everything by hand and from scratch. I see this being true for programming in say 10-20 years after technology like this has matured. In building a software package, you would use the AI to tackle problems that have been solved before, things like GUIs for example, webpage layouts etc, leaving the human developer to focus on the core of the application. Even if the AI wrote 15-30 percent of the sourcecode itself, that would be a huge timesaver and probably worth the investment.

[@quelchx]

Can't hate on CoPilot. I can smack down 8 hours worth of work in a few hours and chill. This tool in the hands of decent developer's is to me a game changer for smaller companies like the one I work with.

[@ugogatto]

in near future code will write us

[@Theraot]

Ah, yes, AI controlled robot tattoo machines.

[@astroid-ws4py]

Thats exactly what those mRNA vaxxines do

[@Blood-PawWerewolf]

And if they start looking at code that are from private repository, ie Unreal Engine. Oh boy, that would be a huge problem. breaking IP laws, privacy violations and snooping on their users.

[@brodriguez11000]

Fortunately humans don't do that kind of stuff. ;-)

[@stevenbc9597]

Visual studio 2022 code assistant is amazing. Sometimes it will generate a full method and all I have to do is hit tab to code.

[@kazwalker764]

Many devops tools are written in Go, to say it's "only strongly used at Google" (3:07) is an incredibly unresearched statement.

[@williamwatkins6669]

I used it for a year. It was fun and actually helped learn stuff. But now that it's become a product, I guess it is back to the old ways

[@openroomxyz]

Did you go back using it?

[@williamwatkins6669]

@@openroomxyz nope

[@openroomxyz]

@@williamwatkins6669 You miss it or it was not that usefull, and usual autocompleate is not that different?

[@williamwatkins6669]

@@openroomxyz don't get me wrong, it is an awesome tool and much more powerful than a simple auto complete. But it's just a question of principal. Basically I like open source and I feel the behaviour of Microsoft using open source stuff, then letting the software in beta for free and then adding a pay wall is a bit cheeky. Second of all, even though it helped a lot, I felt like I was not getting better. That is it did all the heavy lifting so even though it could produce code you didn't think about, at some point you become lazy. So in a professional environment it may be useful to produce code quick but I don't know. As o said, it was fun whilst it lasted but I don't miss it. In business terms '' it's nice to have'' but not ''a must have''

[@openroomxyz]

@@williamwatkins6669 Thanks! for this long and detailed answer.

[@wh1tecl0ud]

Like immediately for the sense of humour. Even though I'm absolutely not bothered by discussed question and, hope, won't

[@BrandonNyman]

If you have GitHub student pack, you get this for free. I'm trying it out as I don't have anything commercial that I am worried about telemetry wise. And disabling the few things I can to improve privacy and avoid problematic code. Not sure if it will stick around for me.

[@thelordposeidon]

You should look into ninetab, it's similar but doesn't seem to be as bad

[@iLikeCoffee777]

Honestly I'd love to see this producing a legal challenge in regards to things like the GPL version 3. That POS license literally makes a ton of code completely unusable because of the absolute carry-forward requirements. If this can produce code that that does the same function without copying the code itself itself it basically makes a lot of licensing irrelevant using the current legal standards.

[@AbhinavChemikala]

how to apply for students version?

[@brianwest7344]

I'm old enough to remember when 4GL was going to replace programmers, then it was modelling tools and now it's AI. I'm not worried.

[@mandisaw]

I'm not worried that this will replace good programmers. But I am worried that it'll seem like a magic shortcut to students, low-effort contract programmers paid hourly, and managers looking for cheap alternatives. We already had a big, growing problem with explaining to all the above why good != cheap, and this just adds a veneer of truthiness to the [false] notion that you can get good, fast, secure, maintainable code without paying for it. There's also already an issue where most devs under 3-4yrs mainly Google/copy their code, sans understanding - this will likely feed that bad habit.

[@John-mj1kk]

@@mandisaw That applies not just in the realm of software development but in all fields. What exactly scares you so much? There will always be those who outperform everyone and those who are clueless about their area of competence. It is imperative to learn how to use the tools properly. If students are mediocre, I doubt GitHub Copilot was the determining factor. With or without it, they would still be average. Just stay away from employing underperforming developers. It is as simple as that, and most companies do that anyway.

[@mandisaw]

@@John-mj1kk Most companies hire the cheapest person they can find, and hope for the best. My concern is that our world runs on software, and if we have higher proportions of people who are in the field, but suck at it, the effects will reverberate. We already see some of this now, with how much crappy code goes out into production, or leaky-ass insecure crap, copy-pasted bugs/exploits, etc. It gets caught now [eventually], but if fast & lazy becomes the standard, that doesn't bode well for my retirement years 😅

[@Starius2]

Will it work with unreal engine?

[@usmonov_dev]

I have been using copilot for the past month, honestly, it was a useful tool to be more productive. Actually, I don't depend on suggestions, but repetitive code generations save a lot of time. However, I'm not sure I'm going to pay )

[@HE360]

One day, video games are going to be able to make themselves.

[@VoylinsLife]

You can actually start the trial without a payment plan.

[@Amipotsophspond]

so what you're saying is I can take leaked Torrented M$ code, use ONLY that as a training set and make my own Ai copilot. That will you know help me make some competition to M$ products. oh look me any my Ai coded up public domain Azure, oh look now MS owns blizzard looks like have a public domain open source WOW, oh look my own public domain open source win7, no need to upgrade all the bad stuff taken out, MS office too we will just public domain it and copy some of the compatibility for open office. yeah M$ let's go down this path.

[@cachorro25]

I'm not mad at it. Has anyone used it for unity development?

[@AiEdgar]

It is a great tool and I am happy is out. The code is coming just from open code and it is not bervetum as you said. Like any tool you can use it to come up with exactly the same code as a licensed code, insecure code or malicious code but you are the one responsible since it only suggest code.

[@atirutwattanamongkol8806]

Why does him saying "Boom" gets me every damn time bruh

[@_mamoniem]

you've got a strong believe in humanity ^_^

[@matheus-kirchesch]

Its not really AI is it? looks like pre programmed macros

[@el2746]

It is AI since sometimes it will understand your intent of creating a method or class for example. If you are reeeeeally strict then i would say copilot is intelisense 2.0 where it will shortcut lots of boilerplate code (something like GUI programming with java swing, for example) Edit: Also the definition of an AI is not like "oh no robots will rule the world if we let them!". A Tic Tac Toe AI (for example) is basically a function with 3 ifs and some array accesses, but it's still labeled as "AI"

[@matheus-kirchesch]

@@el2746 Sure, there is no real definition of AI, since anything coded with an If/Else would qualify as an AI, so you have to take in context, like video thumb and the way the person on the video talks about the feature About your point of it detecting your intention yeah i would say mike would call it AI you are right

[@astroid-ws4py]

A lot of what is called AI is basically just statistics. And some high school level trigonometry in case it is a physical robot.

[@Josivis]

I use it mainly to design html pages I describe what I want in a comment sometimes it works.

[@MirceaIliePloscaru]

Really don't understand the whole fuss around it. I see no difference between Copilot suggesting code or me searching for it and finding the same snippet / logic by myself. Been using it for at least 7 months now and it's been a blessing. It frees me from writing boilerplate which gives me more time to think. Also very useful when brainstorming.

[@shadamethyst1258]

If you found the snippet on say stackoverflow, then you know that you may only use it under stackoverflow's license, which require you to link back to the answer. I see very few developers respect this license, and copilot is one of them

[@Jova]

It works with Lua too. It is epic.

[@Βετο]

Microsoft has ALWAYS tried to monetize developers, and now their strategy is: "Pay us to train your future replacement"

[@jon9103]

If it were actually good, they would charge a lot more than $10 per month for it. So it's probably not very good, which means it's not worth paying for.

[@mandisaw]

You misunderstand the market. It's for (A) hourly contract-based coders, especially in low-CoL markets, and (B) companies/enterprises, who likely pay a higher site-based rate. Combine this with a more remote-first mindset, and US coders are looking at the same automation threat as any auto worker.

[@xr.spedtech]

I need a faster version of the quadratic equation to optimize ray tracing code ... 🖐️😏 I'll give it a try in the future...

[@dinoscheidt]

I use copilot for a year now. And it’s super helpful - when you are a software engineer concerned about architecture, state flow and test ability. If your job is to convert written requirements into syntax: yup, you’re job is hopefully obsolete soon so engineers like me can work even faster 😬

[@el2746]

not if you still have to test it so it doesnt have bugs or open doors that led to some easy hacks. Oh, and forget about efficiency.

[@dinoscheidt]

@@el2746 I do test driven development. If the generated code doesn’t pass, of course you need to do adjustments. And what about this isn’t efficient?

[@el2746]

@@dinoscheidt if is not efficient and you are using it, let's say for web development then it's ok, but if you are using it for a videogame or some haevy app, it may tend to a worse user experience, and the hardware requirement will lead to some users just unable to run it

[@dinoscheidt]

@@el2746 That should be covered by performance tests to check if your performance is bad in certain flame charts and optimize then. To just believe that someone (or something) can do it best is a trip down a cliff. PS: I am using copilot for fullstack dev, and webgl / shader logic (augmented reality). Copilot makes sometimes the same mistakes like humans… but on average way less than what I see from other devs. It’s a co-pilot at the end of the day and if you don’t do automatic feature, performance, regression testing - you need to get your software engineering skills up before collaborating with anybody. Human or machine.

[@el2746]

​@@dinoscheidt what i mean is that if code needs to be optimized, you still need a person to fix it because copilot won't (at least for now), and some optimizations can be hard to do

[@ungamed]

Imagine this using code from stackoverflow...

[@deathofthemagi]

I turned off snippets generation in vs2022 I definitely do not want this. Intellesence is as far as I want the IDE to go when assisting me with code

[@jamesthewiidict]

But Microsoft owns Id Software, so technically they are the copyright holders of Quake's source code.

[@gxgl]

I use it until I have discover it suggesting my own code :)) So it is out. Not because I don't want to share but because I see it like a keylogger. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am. Maybe some security super smart brain will have a look on it in the future.

[@powerLuis159]

Happy to be a student

[@vi6ddarkking]

Personally I Use Visual Scripting To Create My Games So This Isn't Anything I Much Care For. Let Me Know When AI Assisted Animation Reaches The Point Where You Can Turn A Stickman Battle In To Demon Slayer Then You'll Have My Complete and Undivided Attention.

[@Cadaverine1990]

If it gets to that point I'll be impressed, I just want it to the point I don't need to rig my models. Pop a model in and the AI determines the object and bam automatic rigging and basic animations based on what it has learned from videos of the object (animal, human)

[@vi6ddarkking]

@@Cadaverine1990 We Already Have NVIDIA GauGAN That Turn Colors Into Landscapes So The Starting Point Of The Technology Is Already Here.

[@kryptonic010]

Yeah, they blew it with telemetry. No go!

[@JermaineMorgan]

Oh y’all thought trashy no code reskins, were bad…. Just wait.

[@ItumelengS]

It feels like an extra step. Why would I pay for that?

[@KoltPenny]

Where do you get you Go intel? wtf

[@physixtential]

A perfect case study for why humanity isn't a type 2 civilization by now. The ability to protect work vs the ability to freely use anyone else's work. If only somehow nobody had to care about credit for work and at the same time have an incentive. I really can't even begin to have good ideas about solutions to these problems. Thinking about it and why it all is a problem makes me super disappointed with the state of humanity. I don't even know if copyright has resulted in more innovation or less innovation. I don't think the answer is obvious.

[@VictorMartins239]

just uninstalled it today, not paying $10 for something that gives me almost no usefullness

[@andre7417]

Just wait until it starts to code a new blockchain currency/coin/token/whatever. CryptoAI

[@codegodtreviso4448]

9:23 luck for me my code is complete garbage hehe

[@upmindai6812]

Let´s be honest, every programmer who uses this is essentially helping to create the monster that puts him without a job in a few years time. It is the harsh reality that is already inevitable.

[@daysetx]

Does the same statement applies to any answer on stackoverflow? The price on Copilot is too high, compared to its outcome.

[@pushqrdx]

It's just a glorified boilerplate generator, it doesn't architect, design or engineer a product, and imo will never do that in the foreseeable future. Also lovely for exploring new languages