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Good codebases don't need boilerplate to do basic stuff: in this sense, copilot is a patch over the real problem, which can be solved with better frameworks and
by danogentili 4y ago
Good codebases don't need boilerplate to do basic stuff: in this sense, copilot is a patch over the real problem, which can be solved with better frameworks and more code reuse.
I tried copilot during the beta, and apart from the obvious legal licensing issues, I simply could not find a valid usecase for any of the codebases I usually work with.
At my day job, I spend more time thinking of better ways to do X, rather than writing boilerplate code :)
- netr0ute 4y agoWhat are some examples of code without boilerplate?
- williamcotton 4y agoI have found Copilot useful while writing compilers and virtual machines all the way up the chain to CSS grids and media queries. Are you telling me there isn’t a fair bit of boilerplate in bog standard implementations of OP_ADD or in a grid layout with a sidebar and a footer? The irony here is that the level of abstraction necessary to remove all boilerplate means that you’re removing the descriptive nature of the boilerplate and making your code difficult to understand. Boilerplate isn’t necessarily a bad thing but sometimes it can be rather verbose and it is very nice to offload that typing to a tool.
- williamscales 4y agoWhenever I have boilerplate in a codebase I try to make a tool to create it for me. So copilot does seem like an extension of that. I think the thing that weirds me out about copilot is that I can't peer inside it. I guess I like knowing something will always work?
- artificialLimbs 4y agoIf it doesn't work, you don't have to accept its recommendation. You just keep coding.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoI disagree. Some amount of boilerplate is preferred versus abstracting everything. Boilerplate can be frustrating to write, and fiddly boilerplate absolutely should be abstracted, but in general it should makes the flow of logic easier to follow. > At my day job, I spend more time thinking of better ways to do X, rather than writing boilerplate code :) Not that you are suggesting otherwise, and I am being somewhat facetious, but oftentimes boilerplate is preferred to boiling the ocean.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jackson1442 4y agoA million times yes. If a codebase is magically adding _all_ of the boilerplate, it's almost always harder to understand what's actually happening.
- pleas4nt0ne 4y agoAt your job the boilerplate was probably written already and you can avoid it. Not all jobs are on mature projects. I get tired of highly subjective anecdotes being used as concrete truths. You are not the center of reality as we don’t know there is one. So good on you for having a job where the boring work was already in place. Look how far you have come on your own leveraging past effort. So proud of you.
- antihero 4y agoThis way lies hellish amounts of indirection.
- soulofmischief 4y agoYou're completely missing the point of copilot. It speeds up typing by 10% or more in highly organized codebases. Strong codebases synergize with copilot, they don't compete. 10%+ speedup is a huge, obvious win. Anything that increases my productivity is good.