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Does GitHub Copilot write perfect code? No. GitHub Copilot tries to understand your intent and to generate the best code it can, but the code it suggests may n
by aj3 5y ago
Does GitHub Copilot write perfect code?
No. GitHub Copilot tries to understand your intent and to generate the best code it can, but the code it suggests may not always work, or even make sense. While we are working hard to make GitHub Copilot better, code suggested by GitHub Copilot should be carefully tested, reviewed, and vetted, like any other code. As the developer, you are always in charge.
https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/
EDIT: the text above is a direct quote from the Copilot website
- danparsonson 5y ago> ...may not always work, or even make sense... Naively, as someone who just heard of this - that sounds worse than useless. If you can't trust its output and have to verify every line it produces and that the combination of those lines does what you wanted, surely it's quicker just to write the code yourself?
- aj3 5y agoThen write the code yourself. It's not like you're forced to use this demo.
- danparsonson 5y agoWell, you're right. I was somehow expecting there might be a silver lining I'd missed but perhaps not.
- cjaybo 5y agoNot exactly a confidence-inspiring reply from someone who just identified themselves as representing the project here!
- aj3 5y agoI don't work for Github (nor MS) and do not represent Copilot.
- vultour 5y agoJust today I needed to quickly load a file into a string in golang. I haven't done that in a while, so I had to go look up what package and function to use for that. I'd love a tool that would immediately suggest a line saying `ioutil.ReadFile()` after defining the function. I would never accept a full-function suggestion from Copilot, similarily to how I never copy and paste code verbatim from StackOverflow. Using it as hints for what you might want to use next seems like a nice productivity boost.
- edgyquant 5y agoIt’s quite literally stealing code from repos under a GPL license and suggesting them to people regardless of license (if any) they’re using. I do not see how this is legal.
- aj3 5y agoI disagree with this attitude. Many demos such as this one with Quake code are intentionally looking for (funny) outliers by bending the rules. But this is not how anyone would use the system in a real scenario (no one should select license by typing "// Copyright\t" and selecting whatever gets auto-completed), so it doesn't really demonstrate any new limits besides what you could reasonably expect anyway (and what's mentioned on the Copilot's landing page). Basically, in order to fall victim for this "code theft" (or any other "footguns" from Twitter threads) you'd need to be actively working against all the best practices and common sense. If you actually use it as a productivity tool (the way it is marketed) you'll remain in full control of your code.
- edgyquant 5y agoSure, people should double check the code I don’t disagree, but a proprietary code suggestion tool shouldn’t be suggesting licensed code at all; let alone GPLd code unless they can somehow verify the code base they are suggesting it become part of is GPL. That is the problem here and I don’t see how you can disagree with that.
- louthy 5y ago> are intentionally looking for (funny) outliers by bending the rules By typing “fast inverse square root”? That is hardly an outlier or manipulating the machine