9 ms·

Does anyone actually use Copilot day to day? How much time does it actually save?

solidr53 5y ago
Writing scrapers with it is also amazing. All from the puppeteer code, response interface and casting to a local class model. Very time saving indeed.
- 37ef_ced3 5y ago
  How close are you to being fully obsolete?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bspammer 5y ago
    The correct response to becoming obsolete is to learn something new, not to fight the thing making you obsolete. Doing the latter is about as productive as yelling at the tide to not come in.
    - 37ef_ced3 5y ago
      Yes, I guess it's like complaining about nuclear weapons. Best to embrace them. If we can do it, we should do it. All technology is progress. All technology improves the human existence.
      - bspammer 5y ago
        It's irrelevant whether the technology is good or bad. There's nothing you can do to stop it happening, so do you want to complain, or do you want to embrace the change and stay ahead of the curve?
        37ef_ced3 5y ago
        I work on deep learning professionally, at the most important company in the space. I even have open source deep learning projects, most recently: https://NN-512.com https://NN-512.com I profit from your obsolescence. I'm making you obsolete. I know what I'm doing. I'm making you worthless. The fact that you can fail to do even a basic check into me speaks volumes.
        bspammer 5y ago
        Very impressive, but if I spent my days googling the random hex usernames of every person I replied to on hacker news I'd be obsolete even faster :)
        37ef_ced3 5y ago
        I am the one who knocks.
davidpires 5y ago
Depends on the task, writing e2e tests using copilot it's amazing
fermuch 5y ago
Writing boring chores or repetitive code is amazing. Need to handle all cases in a case in pretty much the same way but changing only one thing? Write the first one, the rest is auto coded perfectly.
- nsoonhui 5y ago
  But isn't much better to just manually code it into reusable function and use it repeatedly, instead of letting AI generates all the boilerplate code and causes maintenance headache down the road?
  - tobr 5y ago
    > boring chores or repetitive code > manually code it into reusable function and use it repeatedly Refactoring every place where you do x into a reusable function that does x is a boring repetitive chore.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Sounds like a technical debt generator. I feel for the devs who will have to clean up the legacy from this in 10 years.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Sounds like a job creator :P
- cube00 5y ago
  > Need to handle all cases in a case in pretty much the same way but changing only one thing? Write the first one, the rest is auto coded perfectly. As someone who has suffered though inheriting a code base of excessive copy/paste with things done "pretty much the same way but changing only one thing" it's a nightmare to take it to diff and try and refactor out the common code. In my case I had to fix a bug in their copy/paste mess and found six separate copies of a whole functions worth of code duplicated. I suspect part of the reason is for the initial developer it's a great feeling to churn out tons of code and it all kind of works without having to think how you make a block of code generic (avoiding temptation to just pass in a global state struct and dealing with function pointers in the worst cases etc) but having suffered the after effects, I implore you, PLEASE don't repeat yourself (DRY)
byteface 5y ago
I do every day. I code 5 times faster on problems several times harder. You also get good at 'using copilot' just like you can be 'good at googling'. So if you not already doing it. Start now. IMO. There's literally no point coding without it. You are completely wasting your time. However it has limits. It only helps you write code. Architecture is still down to you. If it could read your whole codebase rather than just the page you are on. And if you could supply it prompts via urls. i.e. preloads it with hints from other code bases. Then it will really become something else.
- meijer 5y ago
  > There's literally no point coding without it. Except maybe that it is still not generally available.
  - jen20 5y ago
    Or trivial matters like “license compliance”.
  - byteface 5y ago
    True. My son is on the waiting list several week now. But honestly traditional coding is the past. Soon they might be asking for someone with 12 months copilot experience. I don't mind the negative downvotes from luddites. Copilot is smarter and faster than you. Accept it and learn to use it.
    - rak1507 5y ago
      If copilot is smarter and faster than you, that says more about you than it does about copilot :)
      - byteface 5y ago
        If you don't think it is. It says a great deal about you too :)
pps 5y ago
I do, it's helpful most of the time, mostly because it behaves like intelligent text expander, and couple of times a day I'm consciously aware how it helped me in even more "intelligent" way. There were also situations when it was distracting/confusing, but I can deal with it. I'm working as web dev, with TS, JS and PHP, and in my case there is no place for some great solutions that I wouldn't thought about myself (less than 5 times I've used something generated with comment), it's simply predicting what I want to do next in the line and instead of writing 50 chars to end that, I can hit tab. Honestly, I don't want to work without it anymore. EDIT. regarding these situations when it doesn't predict what I wanted, I feel that my brain is getting better at not focusing at that and moving on. At first it was distracting, now I subconsciously know that the provided solution might be wrong and I'm deciding faster if it's something I should choose or skip. Your tool is adapting to you and you're adapting to your tool to find the right balance :)
- maest 5y ago
  Perhaps controversial, but maybe that's an issue with the PL - if higher level, domain specific, more powerful abstractions were baked into the language, maybe all the boilerplate would not be necessary. Of course, getting a new language to wide spread adoption is far from trivial, but that's a separate problem.

Writing scrapers with it is also amazing. All from the puppeteer code, response interface and casting to a local class model. Very time saving indeed.

37ef_ced3 5y ago
How close are you to being fully obsolete?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bspammer 5y ago
  The correct response to becoming obsolete is to learn something new, not to fight the thing making you obsolete. Doing the latter is about as productive as yelling at the tide to not come in.
  - 37ef_ced3 5y ago
    Yes, I guess it's like complaining about nuclear weapons. Best to embrace them. If we can do it, we should do it. All technology is progress. All technology improves the human existence.
    - bspammer 5y ago
      It's irrelevant whether the technology is good or bad. There's nothing you can do to stop it happening, so do you want to complain, or do you want to embrace the change and stay ahead of the curve?
      - 37ef_ced3 5y ago
        I work on deep learning professionally, at the most important company in the space. I even have open source deep learning projects, most recently: https://NN-512.com https://NN-512.com I profit from your obsolescence. I'm making you obsolete. I know what I'm doing. I'm making you worthless. The fact that you can fail to do even a basic check into me speaks volumes.
        bspammer 5y ago
        Very impressive, but if I spent my days googling the random hex usernames of every person I replied to on hacker news I'd be obsolete even faster :)
        37ef_ced3 5y ago
        I am the one who knocks.

davidpires 5y ago

Depends on the task, writing e2e tests using copilot it's amazing

fermuch 5y ago

Writing boring chores or repetitive code is amazing. Need to handle all cases in a case in pretty much the same way but changing only one thing? Write the first one, the rest is auto coded perfectly.

nsoonhui 5y ago
But isn't much better to just manually code it into reusable function and use it repeatedly, instead of letting AI generates all the boilerplate code and causes maintenance headache down the road?
- tobr 5y ago
  > boring chores or repetitive code > manually code it into reusable function and use it repeatedly Refactoring every place where you do x into a reusable function that does x is a boring repetitive chore.
Jensson 5y ago
Sounds like a technical debt generator. I feel for the devs who will have to clean up the legacy from this in 10 years.
- bserge 5y ago
  Sounds like a job creator :P
cube00 5y ago
> Need to handle all cases in a case in pretty much the same way but changing only one thing? Write the first one, the rest is auto coded perfectly. As someone who has suffered though inheriting a code base of excessive copy/paste with things done "pretty much the same way but changing only one thing" it's a nightmare to take it to diff and try and refactor out the common code. In my case I had to fix a bug in their copy/paste mess and found six separate copies of a whole functions worth of code duplicated. I suspect part of the reason is for the initial developer it's a great feeling to churn out tons of code and it all kind of works without having to think how you make a block of code generic (avoiding temptation to just pass in a global state struct and dealing with function pointers in the worst cases etc) but having suffered the after effects, I implore you, PLEASE don't repeat yourself (DRY)

byteface 5y ago

I do every day. I code 5 times faster on problems several times harder. You also get good at 'using copilot' just like you can be 'good at googling'. So if you not already doing it. Start now. IMO. There's literally no point coding without it. You are completely wasting your time. However it has limits. It only helps you write code. Architecture is still down to you. If it could read your whole codebase rather than just the page you are on. And if you could supply it prompts via urls. i.e. preloads it with hints from other code bases. Then it will really become something else.

meijer 5y ago
> There's literally no point coding without it. Except maybe that it is still not generally available.
- jen20 5y ago
  Or trivial matters like “license compliance”.
- byteface 5y ago
  True. My son is on the waiting list several week now. But honestly traditional coding is the past. Soon they might be asking for someone with 12 months copilot experience. I don't mind the negative downvotes from luddites. Copilot is smarter and faster than you. Accept it and learn to use it.
  - rak1507 5y ago
    If copilot is smarter and faster than you, that says more about you than it does about copilot :)
    - byteface 5y ago
      If you don't think it is. It says a great deal about you too :)

pps 5y ago

I do, it's helpful most of the time, mostly because it behaves like intelligent text expander, and couple of times a day I'm consciously aware how it helped me in even more "intelligent" way. There were also situations when it was distracting/confusing, but I can deal with it. I'm working as web dev, with TS, JS and PHP, and in my case there is no place for some great solutions that I wouldn't thought about myself (less than 5 times I've used something generated with comment), it's simply predicting what I want to do next in the line and instead of writing 50 chars to end that, I can hit tab. Honestly, I don't want to work without it anymore. EDIT. regarding these situations when it doesn't predict what I wanted, I feel that my brain is getting better at not focusing at that and moving on. At first it was distracting, now I subconsciously know that the provided solution might be wrong and I'm deciding faster if it's something I should choose or skip. Your tool is adapting to you and you're adapting to your tool to find the right balance :)

maest 5y ago
Perhaps controversial, but maybe that's an issue with the PL - if higher level, domain specific, more powerful abstractions were baked into the language, maybe all the boilerplate would not be necessary. Of course, getting a new language to wide spread adoption is far from trivial, but that's a separate problem.