11 ms·

The amount of people who think that GitHub Copilot is a good idea is just frightening. Just shows how many people never thought about the semantics of their pro

• onion2k 5y ago
  Of course, when the correctness of your program does not matter in the first place, but just its output, and you happen to be able to judge the quality of the output without knowing anything about your program, then something like Github Copilot makes sense. So the problem is that Copilot will only work for 99.99% of all the code that's ever written?
  • TeMPOraL 5y ago
    The problem is, Copilot will work for 99% of the time you use it - or more like 60%, going by the examples on their front page) - and the remaining 1-40%, it'll give you subtly buggy code.
    • onion2k 5y ago
      the remaining 1-40%, it'll give you subtly buggy code I think that's OK. Most code is subtly bugger no matter where it originated from. It's always going to be up to the developer to check and test what they're committing whether it's from Copilot, a co-worker, or they wrote it themselves. I think Copilot is meant as an aid to the code writing process, not a replacement. It's not really that different to any other tool. Plus, fortunately, most code is never subtly buggy if you look at small enough parts. If it doesn't work correctly it's very obviously wrong. As Copilot is aimed (for now) at small functions any bugs will manifest in clearly broken outputs. It's when Copilot can generate entire classes, or whole applications, that we'll need to reassess if the code it creates is actually worthwhile.
• vanviegen 5y ago
  What would you say they'd have to do differently/better to get it right?
  • auggierose 5y ago
    The thing is, the technology to do it right is just not there yet. So unleashing this stuff without making sure it can be controlled the right way is basically a Jurassic Park scenario.
  • bregma 5y ago
    First prerequisite: solve the halting problem.
• simias 5y ago
  I don't really share your opinion, I think bad devs will write bad code and good devs will write (mostly) good code, with or without it. The problem exhibited in TFA is not so different from people copy/pasting StackOverflow answers without understanding them.
  • wyuenho 5y ago
    The problem is with Copilot, or over-relying on it for its purported convenience, bad devs will have a harder time becoming good devs. Discovering what code to write and what their exact effects are is a major part of the journey to becoming good dev. If humans aren't going thru this process, I very much doubt they'll be able to quality control the code Copilot dumps in until later in the cycle. Doing things the hard way is essential for being a good dev.
    • emodendroket 5y ago
      I've heard this same line for using IDEs for years. Everyone else is welcome to stick with Ed if they like. I'm going to use the tools that are available to me to make my job easier.
      • auggierose 5y ago
        If you don't understand the difference between Idea IntelliJ, which I loved as soon as it came out, and Github Copilot, then you are exactly the reason why I am frightened.
        • emodendroket 5y ago
          IntelliJ and friends make a lot of suggestions, which aren't always good to blindly accept. It's not exactly the same but it's in the same universe of machine-assisted work that still requires human direction.
          • pyrale 5y ago
• codingdave 5y ago
  Copilot just has the wrong experience. There is nothing wrong with suggesting an algorithm with a code snippet as an example. That is its core use, and it does the job. It just needs the snippets to be clearly marked as such, with a way to track that you reviewed the code and adjusted it to your use case. When people make security corrections to those snippets, ideally it would learn the corrections. Perhaps even have a feature to flag a snippet as insecure, to help that process. Copilot is imperfect, yes. But there is a large grey area between perfect and "utterly wrong"
  • alexgmcm 5y ago
    >But there is a large grey area between perfect and "utterly wrong" Not on internet discussion boards.
• arcturus17 5y ago
  I'm afraid I don't understand your argument. The programmer is still ultimately responsible for the correctness, and quality, of the program. These are just very advanced IDE hints. How is this approach "wrong"?
  • sergiomattei 5y ago
    Yeah, this point I really don't get. Your job as a programmer is to ensure the correctness of the code you write, Copilot isn't really changing that.
    • baby 5y ago
      You’d have to believe auto completion is evil too I guess
    • skohan 5y ago
      If you went to school in CS, think about the worst programmer in your graduating class. You don't think they are going to mindlessly accept the autocomplete as long as it compiles? I can imagine this will lead to a lot of bad code making it into production.
      • sergiomattei 5y ago
        So? Systems should be in place to review code. If you don't have these systems in place, you're getting what you deserve. Hiring subpar talent and not having processes in place isn't Copilot's fault. This is almost like blaming the car for an accident. If you have a shitty driver and the traffic lights aren't working, it's not your Corolla's fault.
  • rdedev 5y ago
    If the programmer dosent have the requisite knowledge to verify the code it's hard to know if the generated results are correct. Compare this to copy pasting solutions from stackoverflow. Atleast there you get a pretty good idea of the pros and cons of a solution. With copilot it's all upto the programmers understanding of the generated code. Of that programmer propmts copilot on a domain they don't know much about it could lead to a lot of subtle bugs being introduced
• YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  Just look into the name of the program. It's "copilot" and in my understanding the intention is just to give suggestion and in not to write provably correct program which matches some given specification. Think of it as 10x of autocomplete, not 1/10x of human replacement.
  • rightbyte 5y ago
    A "copilot" is also a pilot and can take over when needed. The name does not imply helper, cheerleader or advisor.
  • falcolas 5y ago
    Co-Pilots are fully qualified pilots. They can take over 100% of the jobs of the Captain if they need to. Just like Tesla’s Autopilot, this was poorly named, at a minimum.
• IMTDb 5y ago
  It's called "Copilot" for a reason: you are still in the driver seat, and the tool is just there to give you better hints and direction. I would agree with you if it was called "GitHub Self-Coding" where you are the destination clerk and letting the tool code. But that's really not the goal of the tool. Don't put it in hand of non programmers
  • tyingq 5y ago
    Perhaps pedantic, but "copilot" in the real world implies something very different from hints and direction.
    • zozbot234 5y ago
      So you're saying Copilot is the new Autopilot.
      • pjerem 5y ago
        No, copilot in the real world is not the pilot's assistant, it's also a pilot, do the same work as the pilot, takes the commands as much as the pilot and can or cannot be more experienced than the pilot. In fact, the copilot is just a normal pilot with the only difference that the pilot is also the captain on board, responsible for the police and security on board. And most of the times, companies choose who is the pilot and who is the copilot randomly on a per-flight basis. So no, you wouldn't a copilot that gives subtly wrong information to the pilot (and vice versa)
        • jaywalk 5y ago
          > And most of the times, companies choose who is the pilot and who is the copilot randomly on a per-flight basis. What companies are you aware of that do this? The proper terms are "Captain" and "First Officer" and they are actual rankings within the company, not something that is randomly chosen on a flight-by-flight basis. The actual details of who does what during the flight are generally not related to the ranks ("pilot flying" and "pilot monitoring" duties can and do switch during flight) although the Captain is always the ultimate authority and will be the one to take control in tough situations because he's got more experience. Typical (i.e. almost all) commercial flights will have a Captain sitting in the left seat and a First Officer sitting in the right seat.
• azangru 5y ago
  How is github copilot worse than a very laborious but a very junior developer who can search stack overflow for you and bring you code snippets that sometimes are spot on and sometimes are plain wrong? Presumably that's why code review exists...
  • yarcob 5y ago
    We have mandatory code review for every commit that goes into our app, and still stuff like that routinely slips through. You need a lot of experience to spot errors like this, and stuff will still slip through.
  • TeMPOraL 5y ago
    - The exact StackOverflow snippet said junior is copying was seen by others and likely already debugged to some extent. There's typically also a lot of relevant information in the text surrounding the snippet. - The snippet you get from Copilot is generated by an DNN model. I'd think that alone should scare people. DNN models are correct on a continuous scale, not discrete. A bad pixel on a generated image, an extra comma in generated text, are considered OK. That kind of correctness framework doesn't work with code. From what I read, Codex (the model powering Copilot) is a GPT-3 derivative. Surely you've played with GPT-3 before, you've seen the types of mistakes it makes. In my eyes, this approach just won't fly for code.
    • IncRnd 5y ago
      > - The exact StackOverflow snippet said junior is copying was seen by others and likely already debugged to some extent. There's typically also a lot of relevant information in the text surrounding the snippet. Empirically, this is false. There is an incredibly high amount of bad, incomplete, or vulnerable code on SO.
  • azornathogron 5y ago
    A very junior developer that brings me code snippets that are sometimes plain wrong is not useful to me directly - such a developer costs more time in review than they save by providing the snippets in the first place. The value of such a developer is that over time and with some mentorship they will become a slightly less junior developer who can bring me whole features that I can be reasonably confident are mostly correct. Having said that, I don't know how the much more integrated write/review/edit cycle will work in practice when using copilot. I don't think it will be the same as a junior developer/pair programming partner in any real sense. My initial reaction to copilot is negative, but I'm open to being proven wrong about it.
• fouronnes3 5y ago
  It's interesting to me that the next few steps of this technology evolution might be that we loose the ability to prove our code correctness forever. Every program will just be a certain - measured by tests - percentage of accuracy against some goal and that's it. Then when every program is eventually upgraded to this status, all of the code we run is bootstrapped through proprietary AI - including the AI itself - and it's black boxes all the way down. Programming is now an experimental science where we gather evidence, test hypotheses, press the "copilot" button and tune parameters, like evolutionary biologists studying DNA code.
  • auggierose 5y ago
    Yes, this is where this style of thinking leads to. Hard work is required so that we do not end up there. Can this race be won? I hope so.
  • emodendroket 5y ago
    Can't say we've really figured out proofs for program correctness now, can we?
    • auggierose 5y ago
      We have figured it out. People with a PhD and given enough time can do it. Scaling this will be possible, especially with the help of AI, as soon as there is the actual will there to do it.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        I admire your optimism.
      • IncRnd 5y ago
        So, for people to quickly implement http requests, we need a mountain of AI hardware backed by legions of PhDs with endless time to vet the http requests. That doesn't seem sustainable. It also seems like a poor cost to value ratio.
• habibur 5y ago
  Things will improve over time. Like all tech. But it's here to stay, like it or hate it.
• BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Unless you never copy/paste from stackoverflow, this argument is kinda moot. Copilot/kite/etc don't intend to replace your brain, it's a shortcur for googling. You are fully expected to understand, adapt and fix the suggestion. Now I do understand many won't do so. But they already do the same, just slower, with their current method.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    Stackoverflow at least has the benefit of whatever comments might be around it. As far as I can tell, the copilot suggestion doesn't have any way to rate it, make a comment, flag it, etc.
    • jfoster 5y ago
      I think they kind of do. On the Telemetry section of the Copilot site, they mention that they relay whether a suggestion was accepted or rejected. I wonder, how much better could Github Copilot become by also looking that the modifications that are subsequently made to the accepted suggestions? Obviously this would go quite a bit further in terms of telemetry, and may become an issue. They would essentially be training based on non-public code at that point.
      • tyingq 5y ago
        I guess that's a start, but I think comments, flagging, would have value. There's lots of reasons you might not accept something.
      • ffhhj 5y ago
        > On the Telemetry section of the Copilot site, they mention that they relay whether a suggestion was accepted or rejected. That will make it the target of a collaborative bias attack.
        • naniwaduni 5y ago
          Wait, are we sure it'd need to be collaborative?
• e-clinton 5y ago
  In order for AI to be the future, it needs to be the present first… and of course people will criticize. Let’s give it a chance to evolve. And if you have something to contribute to the movement, then build your own tool.
• namelosw 5y ago
  > Well, let's say you have a system in place where you actually prove the correctness of your program. > Of course, when the correctness of your program does not matter in the first place, but just its output 1. There are in fact very, very few projects that try to prove their correctness. Usually, those are extremely critical or dependencies for potential critical applications. Even if a project does this they're doing it partially just for keeping ROI sane. Please correct me if I'm wrong but AFAIK, even most programs on aircraft don't use this approach, although they're definitely interested. 2. For most of the projects, the primary goal is to be useful, to be correct is at most secondary. 3. A program written by humans is not inherently correct, it's more likely to be the opposite. No matter it's written by a human or a machine, you should always write test cases to reflect the properties you care in your program. Properly tested programs written by the machine don't make it less correct than those written by a human. I'm generally interested in Copilot, not because of the novelty it claims to be, but the value it might provide. I see it as a potentially useful tool just like IntelliSense but with greater potential. At the end of the day, it's an AI "Pair". I've been doing pair programming for years, one of the lessons I learned is one should not assume anything just because he/her pair partner is doing it - both of them should be responsible for their program.
• staticassertion 5y ago
  I'm quite excited for copilot. I don't even know that I'd have caught that bug, but I'm sure I could see myself having written it, so it's really no worse - that's why I work on a team with others who likely would have. I'm not worried about it suggesting subtly wrong code. I write subtly wrong code all day every day, and sometimes I catch it, and sometimes I don't. I write tests, I use types, etc. I'll use the same tools to reduce bugs from copilot that I do for myself. I'm not really worried at all.
• marcosdumay 5y ago
  > Of course, when the correctness of your program does not matter in the first place, but just its output, and you happen to be able to judge the quality of the output without knowing anything about your program... Those are way too many words to say "never".
  • auggierose 5y ago
    It's not never. Look at generative art. If you like the output, great. No need to know how the program did it (except maybe for copyright infringement issues :-)). Or if the AI proves the correctness of a program. The output is the proof, I don't need to know how the AI did it. And so on.
• slver 5y ago
  > The amount of people who think that GitHub Copilot is a good idea is just frightening. Just shows how many people never thought about the semantics of their programs for even a second. I think it's an excellent idea. People who copy-paste from Stack Overflow will also copy lots of shitty code or use it incorrectly. But those of us with a clue, have a neat prototyping system where we can modify the solution until it's coherent. It's still on us. Copilot never claimed to produce the best code. And doesn't have to. That's the whole point behind the "pair programming" metaphor.
• ok2938 5y ago
  Yes, the wrongness is partly associated with the direction these things come from. OpenAI leadership knows that there is just sooo much value to capture in more automation, even if it takes billions to get there. They also know, that there is sooo much money around not knowing what to do and so much excitement in the field generated by bystanders, not understanding a single thing. Perfect setting for ride and reap. I repeat: There is nothing open about this, the research scientists are being used in order to propel just another get rich sooner-than-later scheme (how should they know better, they are innocent scientists). Happy bulldozing what is left of society in order to generate profits and to shove the AI BS down the managerial class, because that's all just how the system works. And, if know all that, you can exploit it, hacker.
• sli 5y ago
  About the only code generation I've ever liked is the pure-convenience stuff, like generating a complete (but empty) pattern matching constructs for whatever algebraic type I'm matching on (e.g. case-of). Otherwise, all I want are good suggestions for code completion.