5 ms·

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

by 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.
      - pjerem 5y ago
        I think i was plain just wrong on the "random" part. Mea culpa, I apologize.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Tesla Autopilot, absolutely.
- d_theorist 5y ago
  Exactly. Copilots are fully-capable pilots who frequently take full control of the plane. It's not an appropriate analogy at all.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
A real copilot will get fired and/or go to jail and/or die, if it feeds you subtly wrong data, and leads you to crash a plane. GitHub won't suffer any consequences if its Copilot feeds you bad code that causes a security breach, or wastes a lot of engineering time on debugging subtle heisenbugs. The problem with Copilot is that it works just enough to be dangerous: it streamlines copy-pasting of unchecked code, but the code it offers has subtle bugs. It's even worse than copy-pasting from StackOverflow, because code on SO got at least a passing review by someone who understands it. Here, you get code generated from ML models. Unlike generating pictures of faces or kittens, when an occasional artifact doesn't matter much, an "artifact" in code that you won't notice will still make the code wrong. > Don't put it in hand of non programmers Putting it in hands of programmers isn't really any better. To make it work, you need programmers to be disciplined - more disciplined than they were when copy-pasting from SO.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  If you're taking the code suggestions without reading them it's your fault.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Discipline doesn't scale. Also the problem isn't code that's obviously wrong when you read it. The problem is when code looks OK, but is subtly wrong. Which keeps happening - as we know today, at least two examples featured on Copilot homepage have this problem. To make this work, you have to read each snippet super carefully - which defeats the whole point.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I really don't think it does defeat the point. The point isn't just churning stuff out as fast as possible without concerning yourself with quality. There are lots of other reasons you'd benefit from snippets -- rote work done for you, familiarity with language ecosystem, and so on. It's all well and good to say there should be something better than just discipline but there's no idiot-proof way of writing programs.
londons_explore 5y ago
We could call it "Full Self Coding (BETA)", which is an addon package costing $10k, but with a promise that it'll just get more valuable over time. Eventually, you'll be able to rent out your Full Self Coder and get a full coder salary while you sit on the couch at home doing nothing!
- carlhjerpe 5y ago
  Then GH will realise that their product will never be able to do Full Self Coding in it's current form (need to install a supercomputer (LIDAR) at home to do this safely in any language other than rust). This will require that you buy Github Copilot SFC Model Z, It'll be released next year once they've gathered data from your coding habits for awhile. Pinky promise
skohan 5y ago
> Don't put it in hand of non programmers Who's going to stop them? There's an army of non-programmers trying to break into the industry. You can bet they are going to get their hands on this.

by IMTDb 5y ago

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.
    - pjerem 5y ago
      I think i was plain just wrong on the "random" part. Mea culpa, I apologize.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Tesla Autopilot, absolutely.
d_theorist 5y ago
Exactly. Copilots are fully-capable pilots who frequently take full control of the plane. It's not an appropriate analogy at all.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

A real copilot will get fired and/or go to jail and/or die, if it feeds you subtly wrong data, and leads you to crash a plane. GitHub won't suffer any consequences if its Copilot feeds you bad code that causes a security breach, or wastes a lot of engineering time on debugging subtle heisenbugs. The problem with Copilot is that it works just enough to be dangerous: it streamlines copy-pasting of unchecked code, but the code it offers has subtle bugs. It's even worse than copy-pasting from StackOverflow, because code on SO got at least a passing review by someone who understands it. Here, you get code generated from ML models. Unlike generating pictures of faces or kittens, when an occasional artifact doesn't matter much, an "artifact" in code that you won't notice will still make the code wrong. > Don't put it in hand of non programmers Putting it in hands of programmers isn't really any better. To make it work, you need programmers to be disciplined - more disciplined than they were when copy-pasting from SO.

emodendroket 5y ago
If you're taking the code suggestions without reading them it's your fault.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Discipline doesn't scale. Also the problem isn't code that's obviously wrong when you read it. The problem is when code looks OK, but is subtly wrong. Which keeps happening - as we know today, at least two examples featured on Copilot homepage have this problem. To make this work, you have to read each snippet super carefully - which defeats the whole point.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I really don't think it does defeat the point. The point isn't just churning stuff out as fast as possible without concerning yourself with quality. There are lots of other reasons you'd benefit from snippets -- rote work done for you, familiarity with language ecosystem, and so on. It's all well and good to say there should be something better than just discipline but there's no idiot-proof way of writing programs.

londons_explore 5y ago

We could call it "Full Self Coding (BETA)", which is an addon package costing $10k, but with a promise that it'll just get more valuable over time. Eventually, you'll be able to rent out your Full Self Coder and get a full coder salary while you sit on the couch at home doing nothing!

carlhjerpe 5y ago
Then GH will realise that their product will never be able to do Full Self Coding in it's current form (need to install a supercomputer (LIDAR) at home to do this safely in any language other than rust). This will require that you buy Github Copilot SFC Model Z, It'll be released next year once they've gathered data from your coding habits for awhile. Pinky promise

skohan 5y ago

> Don't put it in hand of non programmers Who's going to stop them? There's an army of non-programmers trying to break into the industry. You can bet they are going to get their hands on this.