Comment by exegete

2 years ago

I think the parent’s comment is probably referring to the fact if you use Copilot to write code then you have to go through and try to understand what it wrote and possibly debug it. And you don’t have the opportunity to ask it why it wrote it the way it did when reviewing its code.

6 comments

exegete

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brookst  2 years ago

I think you’re right, but that just means parent doesn’t understand copilot and is off tilting at windmills.

Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!). And it’s inline and passive; it’s not like you go edit -> insert -> copilot function and it dumps in 100 lines of code you have to debug. Which is what it sounds like parent is mistaking it for.

I’m reminded of 1995, when an elderly relative told me everything wrong with the internet based on TV news and not having ever actually seen the internet.

  • Joker_vD  2 years ago

    > Copilot is amazing for reducing the tedium of typing obvious but lengthy code (and strings!)

    Which it occasionally mistypes. Then you're off to chase a small piece of error in a tub of boilerplate. Great stuff! For actual example, see [0]

    [0] https://blog.ploeh.dk/2022/12/05/github-copilot-preliminary-...

    • brookst  2 years ago

      You must be a much better programmer than I if those are examples you’d use copilot for. I was thinking more like:

         start_value = get_*start_value(user_input)*
   self.log.d*ebug(‘got start_value {start_value}’)*

      . . . where the would-be italics are what copilot would likely suggest for completion.

      And if it’s wrong, you just. . . keep typing. It’s autocomplete, just like IDEs have for other things. I’m kind of astounded that people have such an emotional reaction to an optional, low-key, passive, easily-ignored tool that sometimes saves a bunch of typing. Yes, if you always accept the suggestions you’ll have problems. Just like literally every other coding assistance tool.

      2 replies →

evilduck  2 years ago

But it's trickling in small chunks at a time unless you are just smashing tab repeatedly and don't look at what it did until the very end. You can also not accept what it offers and just continue writing code for yourself. If a dev submitted a bunch of Copilot code they don't understand and can't answer questions about you reject the PR outright and they eventually realize it didn't save them any time or effort. Copilot isn't the employee.