4 ms·

This feature is effectively impossible to replicate. Only Microsoft positioned itself to have: - dataset (GitHub) - tech (openai) - training (azure) - platform

This feature is effectively impossible to replicate. Only Microsoft positioned itself to have: - dataset (GitHub) - tech (openai) - training (azure) - platform (vscode) I'm impressed. They did an amazing job from a corporate strategy standpoint. Also directionally things are getting interesting

djrogers 5y ago
The dataset is all freely available open source code, right? Just because GH hosts it doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t use it for the same purpose.
- midoBB 5y ago
  You'd have to hit rate limiting multiple times no?
  - kall 5y ago
    Arenmt mirrors of all GH code available, for example on BigQuery public datasets. If it‘s there, it should be available in a downloadable format too?
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Not only that, but microsoft could aggressively throttle or outcompete anyone trying to do the same.
  - unfunco 5y ago
    https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/github/github-repos?filter=solution-type:dataset https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/github/... BigQuery used to have a dataset updated weekly, looks like it hasn't been updated since about a year after the acquisition by Microsoft.
- handrous 5y ago
  They'd find a way to keep it practically difficult to use, at the least, if that dataset is vital to the process. Hoarding datasets that should either be wholly public or unavailable for any kind of exploitation is the backbone of 21st century big tech. It's how they make money, and how they maintain (very, very deep) moats against competition. [EDIT] actually, I suspect their play here will be to open up the public data but own the best and most low-friction implementation, then add terms that let them also feed their algo with proprietary code built using their editors. That part won't be freely available, and no free version will be able to provide that further-improved model, even assuming all the software to build it is open-source. Assuming using this thing ends up being a significant advantage (so, assuming this matters at all) your choice will be to either hamstring yourself in the market or to help Microsoft build their dataset.
IshKebab 5y ago
Anyone can download the training set from GitHub.
nmfisher 5y ago
I actually don't think there's much of a moat here at all. GitHub repositories are open for the taking, GPT-XXX is cloneable (mostly, anyway) and VS Code is extensible. They definitely have a good head-start, but I really don't think there's anything here that won't be generally available within 2 years.
- giansegato 5y ago
  I don't think that GH code is easily accessible, with rate limiting and TOS forbidding it. GPT is an open model (for the most part), but its training cost is in the order of tens of millions of $ I can think of no one but a handful of companies being able to compete there. And they won't be ok with extending a Microsoft IDE, nor breaking GitHub TOS. When you start competing on R&D costs the game changes. There's always the chance that training costs will significantly decrease. But even at an order of magnitude less (ie. tens of Ks) it's still beyond reach for open projects and indie devs
deckard1 5y ago
Is this really anything more than a curiosity toy and a marketing tool? I took a look at their examples and they are not at all compelling. In one example it generated SQL and somehow knew the columns and tables in a database that it had no context on. So that's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on right there. Do many developers actually want to work in this manner? That is, being interrupted every time they type with a robot interjection of some Frankenstein code that they now have to go through and review and understand. Personally, this is going to kick me out of the zone/flow too often to be useful. Coding isn't the hard part of my job. If this tool can somehow guess the business requirements of the task at hand, then I'll be impressed. Even if the tool generates accurate code, if I don't fully understand what it wrote, then what? I'm still stuck digging through documentation and stackoverflow to verify that whatever is in my text editor is correct code. "Code confidently in unfamiliar territory" sounds like a Boeing 737 Max sized disaster in the making.

djrogers 5y ago

The dataset is all freely available open source code, right? Just because GH hosts it doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t use it for the same purpose.

midoBB 5y ago
You'd have to hit rate limiting multiple times no?
- kall 5y ago
  Arenmt mirrors of all GH code available, for example on BigQuery public datasets. If it‘s there, it should be available in a downloadable format too?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Not only that, but microsoft could aggressively throttle or outcompete anyone trying to do the same.
- unfunco 5y ago
  https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/github/github-repos?filter=solution-type:dataset https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/github/... BigQuery used to have a dataset updated weekly, looks like it hasn't been updated since about a year after the acquisition by Microsoft.
handrous 5y ago
They'd find a way to keep it practically difficult to use, at the least, if that dataset is vital to the process. Hoarding datasets that should either be wholly public or unavailable for any kind of exploitation is the backbone of 21st century big tech. It's how they make money, and how they maintain (very, very deep) moats against competition. [EDIT] actually, I suspect their play here will be to open up the public data but own the best and most low-friction implementation, then add terms that let them also feed their algo with proprietary code built using their editors. That part won't be freely available, and no free version will be able to provide that further-improved model, even assuming all the software to build it is open-source. Assuming using this thing ends up being a significant advantage (so, assuming this matters at all) your choice will be to either hamstring yourself in the market or to help Microsoft build their dataset.

IshKebab 5y ago

Anyone can download the training set from GitHub.

nmfisher 5y ago

I actually don't think there's much of a moat here at all. GitHub repositories are open for the taking, GPT-XXX is cloneable (mostly, anyway) and VS Code is extensible. They definitely have a good head-start, but I really don't think there's anything here that won't be generally available within 2 years.

giansegato 5y ago
I don't think that GH code is easily accessible, with rate limiting and TOS forbidding it. GPT is an open model (for the most part), but its training cost is in the order of tens of millions of $ I can think of no one but a handful of companies being able to compete there. And they won't be ok with extending a Microsoft IDE, nor breaking GitHub TOS. When you start competing on R&D costs the game changes. There's always the chance that training costs will significantly decrease. But even at an order of magnitude less (ie. tens of Ks) it's still beyond reach for open projects and indie devs

deckard1 5y ago

Is this really anything more than a curiosity toy and a marketing tool? I took a look at their examples and they are not at all compelling. In one example it generated SQL and somehow knew the columns and tables in a database that it had no context on. So that's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on right there. Do many developers actually want to work in this manner? That is, being interrupted every time they type with a robot interjection of some Frankenstein code that they now have to go through and review and understand. Personally, this is going to kick me out of the zone/flow too often to be useful. Coding isn't the hard part of my job. If this tool can somehow guess the business requirements of the task at hand, then I'll be impressed. Even if the tool generates accurate code, if I don't fully understand what it wrote, then what? I'm still stuck digging through documentation and stackoverflow to verify that whatever is in my text editor is correct code. "Code confidently in unfamiliar territory" sounds like a Boeing 737 Max sized disaster in the making.