Copilot isn’t actually bad for developers, it’s just that you need to be careful with it and recognize its limitations.
Writing a bunch of REST endpoints for an API and need to implement all the typical http verbs, and you already have all the matching methods for reading, updating, and deleting values in a complex SQL database for each endpoint to call? Copilot can turn a ten minute chore into a ten second one. Very handy.
Writing those complex SQL methods in the first place? Yeah… Copilot will probably make a ton of mistakes and its work will need to be triple-checked. You’ll save time just doing it yourself if you know how. (And if you don’t, you have no business calling yourself a developer.)
Copilot is best for easy boilerplate and repetitive code. Problems arise as soon as you ask it to get “creative.”
One time I decided for shits and giggles to just keep pushing tab and see where it went. It didn’t take long for it to enter a useless recursive loop, hallucinating a new iteration of the same thing on each line.
It definitely isn’t gonna magically think up new algorithms for you. I don’t know what everybody is scared of. It ain’t even gonna replace my kid programming on Scratch.
Copilot isn’t actually bad for developers, it’s just that you need to be careful with it and recognize its limitations.
Is it me or is this a weird statement for what’s supposed to be an exact science?
Imagine working in construction and using a level and you’re told “it’s not that it’s a bad level, you just gotta be careful with it”.
How much margin for error should we allow for getting our code right? Is it now acceptable if we only get 80% right?
As a software developer I promise you that software development is very much not an exact science.
Programs are complex and there are so many different ways of achieving the same thing that all code has problems and gets a bit messy in places. You can test, but it’s not easy to ensure that everything works the way it should.
The best code you’re going to get will probably be in the space industry, but even that will have bugs. The best you can do is make the code robust even when bugs make things go wrong.
In many cases copilot will do just as well as a junior developer. It’s very good at repetitive tasks and filling gaps in your existing code.
Always ask it to write tests for the code it generates. Of course, then you have to validate that the code works AND that the tests work.
It’s funny that Microsoft fucked up the branding so bad that half of these comments are about GitHub Copilot — a specialized, useful tool for experienced developers to speed up rote tasks — and the other half about their whole “Shoehorn AI into everything.” strategy. And Bing Chat is also now Copilot, apparently? Is Cortana now Windows Copilot? Is there an Xbox Copilot that plays Starfield for you?
Remember that internal Microsoft video that leaked where a marketing person was begging them to use Apple’s iPod box designs instead of their usual ones: https://youtu.be/EUXnJraKM3k?si=3aAZ9xulggtHDVp6
It was apparently 17 years ago but it’s still true that Microsoft can’t brand things for shit.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/EUXnJraKM3k?si=3aAZ9xulggtHDVp6
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Similarly, other users told the outlet that the AI hallucinated wrong answers or miscalculated spreadsheets. AI experts, including The Wharton School professor, Ethan Mollick accused Copilot of making bizarre suggestions for weekend meetings.
It seems these users never used GPT
It’s because it’s not as good
… In contrast, Microsoft’s corporate VP, Jared Spataro, told us that users are finding immediate value in Copilot
haha no really?
