6 ms·

Aside: am I the only one here that is still writing code by hand and not using AI to autogenerate it? Because it seems over the past couple years on HN everybo

• zarzavat 4y ago
  Copilot is way more than scaffolding boilerplate, it catches bugs as you are writing them. For example you expect: x[i] But copilot suggests: x[i+1] …and you think, and you think, and then one of two things happens. Either you satisfy yourself that the answer is indeed x[i], or you accept x[i+1] and sheepishly thank Copilot for catching a bug today. You could have copilot on in the background and never accept a suggestion, and it’s still a productivity enhancement.
  • nathansherburn 4y ago
    I found during my preview months ago that it would often write bugs that took me longer to correct than if I had written it myself. Has it gotten better? Also in the situation where it suggests x[i+1] and it's wrong, doesn't that annoy you? In both cases I'm sure this is just temporary while LLMs get better. But my experience was they were _just_ a little too annoying last time I used them.
    • bananapub 4y ago
      > Has it gotten better? yes
    • markasoftware 4y ago
      Indeed, it introduces subtle bugs related to indexing pretty often. At one point I had it autocomplete maybe 15 lines of code, and I trusted it because the code was all pretty easy and I had written a descriptive comment, which tends to help out Copilot a lot. However, it introduced a very subtle bug where it used a loop counter `i` where it should have been indexing into an array like `arr[i]`, but it still typechecked and happened not to cause insane errors. Took a lot of time to track down later, and it's a bug I never would have written in myself.
• jaredcwhite 4y ago
  Indeed you are not. I've never used any generative AI tools when coding or otherwise, and continue to refuse to at this point in time.
  • ashwagary 4y ago
    >I've never used any generative AI tools when coding or otherwise I'm in the same boat but I must admit the temptation is increasing.
  • adlpz 4y ago
    I understand not doing it, just because you didn't get around to try it, but, refusing? why? Moral reasons? Copyright worries? It's just another tool. So I guess the good old "will never stop using emacs" kind of attitude applies here too?
    • Zuiii 4y ago
      I never relied on code-completion (not even copilot). I found that coworkers who do simply can't function without it. They simply find it very difficult or even impossible to remember more than a few API names, parameters, etc. I still remember the constant complaints in the early days of Rust when code completion was not available or would constantly break. Relying on code-completion for coding or relying on google maps for navigation dims your ability to do these things. Given that copilot is a remote service that I do not control, I will not voluntarily tie my ability to write software to it. Coilot is a conditional, unreliable, untrustworthy, ability-as-a-service. No thank you.
• tasuki 4y ago
  > thinking, designing and abstracting novel ideas into code is the hard part where AI would fall short and just waste my time How can you be sure of that? I know scientists who use ChatGPT to rewrite their text to be clearer. They've also used it to pose novel interesting questions about a situation. On my side, I've found ChatGPT very helpful to explore/compare which library to use to solve my problem and show examples how that library is used. It's also been very helpful lining up Haskell types and translating GHC error messages into English. Sure, those are non-creative tasks, but it's surprisingly good at them.
  • worrycue 4y ago
    Can you trust it though? It can’t really reason - it’s just very good at guessing the right answer if there are a lot of examples. It also lies somewhat frequently. If we have to double check its output, it kind of defeats the purpose - at least part of it - as the “cognitive burden” is still on us. P.S. Not sure what you mean by “lining up” Haskell types … but don’t LSPs already give us clear information about the inferred types and do so with nigh zero chance of errors.
    • tasuki 4y ago
      > Can you trust it though? Yes of course. Libraries: I look at the libraries it suggests, see if they have documentation or GitHub activity. Lining up types: say you have a `List (Maybe a)` and require a `Maybe (List a)`. This is a simple example, of course real life is much more complicated. ChatGPT tells you. Can you trust it? Well did it make the compile error go away? (Sure, I can think of three ways to turn a `List (Maybe a)` into `Maybe (List a)`. Only one will be what I want, but it's easy to tell whether ChatGPT gave me the one I wanted.)
      • lionkor 4y ago
        No, you can't trust it. It will certainly write bugs, and the code will have other issues. Usually too subtle for you to see at first glance, like off-by-one errors, or uncovered edge cases.
      • 4y ago
• ramblerman 4y ago
  > while thinking, designing and abstracting novel ideas into code is the hard part where AI would fall short and just waste my time. So don't use it there :) But I'm curious what kind of coding you do that you never have to do any scaffolding, refactoring, or come across any element of repetitiveness. That is where it shines imo. I find during those boring tasks it quite often just gets my intent, and I can say "yes actually that's exactly what I wanted". Which allows me to get back to the business of "thinking, designing and abstracting novel ideas" quicker.
  • sph 4y ago
    AI is not as foolproof as many want us to believe. In my mind it's like giving a less experienced and error-prone engineer the code I'm working on to refactor. Perhaps it's because I've always been a lone wolf engineer, but I'd rather do it myself than giving quite an important task to someone less experienced than me, whether I'm writing something new (where I need to be at my best) or refactoring (where I still need to be sharp to understand why it was done a certain way to know how to improve) AI would help with extracting code into a function, or writing yet another algorithm implementation, or wiring bog standard libraries (say, cURL), but that's like foreplay and lower effort work I enjoy doing as a break from the hard stuff. And to clarify my comment about AI being an engineer with less experience than me, I'd rather be paired with an actual junior engineer, so at least I can mentor them and help them grow, than just having a machine do something that in some cases might be utterly inane, so I still have to waste time double checking its work, but totally powerless to teach and improve it.
    • enlyth 4y ago
      It's not foolproof but it does guess a lot of what you had exactly in your mind, just hadn't typed down yet. If I start "enum { North", I will gladly accept the ", East, South, West }" autocomplete from Copilot, and this kind of thing, in aggregate, saves hours of your time.
      • TheUndead96 4y ago
        This is my feeling exactly, it is a semantic auto-complete. Should/can it write your core business logic? Probably not, but there is a good chance it can infer and suggest logical patterns in implementation.
• KyeRussell 4y ago
  Weird flex or whatever dude. But all I’m hearing is that your anxiety has led you to a) refuse to look into a new piece of technology, b) hold incorrect views on it (like that it’s only useful for boilerplate code), c) look down on those that ARE using it, and d) pose that your incredible experience is why this wouldn’t be useful to you. If you can’t find your drive to look at new things enough to even see if they’re worth digging more into, which you seemingly haven’t, then I think this speaks poorly of you as a developer.
  • sph 4y ago
    I'm sorry, but I do not get why you're making it personal and attacking my worth as a developer because I am doubtful about what Copilot can do for me. It is possible to disagree without being rude and insulting.
    • parthianshotgun 4y ago
      I think you're speaking to a, most likely, young developer. Having dealt with many similar sentiments, a few more years usually smooths this out. I always wonder if tech work is good for certain personalities, it's quite easy to carry on with a misanthropic communication style and still succeed
  • TomSwirly 4y ago
    Being polite to others costs nothing and makes this a better place for everyone. Personal insults are particularly destructive to civilized discourse.
• arp242 4y ago
  I tried it out, but didn't find it all that helpful. Maybe part of that is just getting used to it. I'm also worried about the long-term effects: I have a much better understanding of things if I write it myself. There's a kind of "practice" involved every time you write something (code, documentation, prose, music, anything) and I'm not so sure losing that is a good thing in the long run. Proof-read a thousand books probably won't make you a great author.
• powerapple 4y ago
  when designing, thinking, abstracting, we are actually not writing any code. I sometimes use a whiteboard for example, of course CoPilot cannot help. Once we have your designed, thought-through implementation in your head, while you are typing in an editor, CoPilot definitely can help you write code faster (or slower if the output is not exactly what you have in your mind). I see it is a productive positive product.
  • JustSomeNobody 4y ago
    > CoPilot definitely can help you write code faster(or slower if the output is not exactly what you have in your mind). I see it is a productive positive product. The actual act of writing code "faster" baffles me. Without tools like intellisense, etc.[0], I am perfectly able to write code as fast as I can type. There's absolutely zero need for me to write faster. [0]Intellisense, etc. tend to get in my way, so I turn it off.
    • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      Intellisense is a godsend when you are working in a large code base using proprietary API with varying level of documentation. It's very good at filling in the full name of that pesky class or giving you a quick list of functions in that package for you to pick the one you want.
• figassis 4y ago
  I use it, for autocomplete. It’s great for creating the text for string constants, error messages, autocompleting if statements (which if variables are properly named, works great). Speeds up repetitive work but it’s not useful for actual problem solving.
• commondream 4y ago
  I tested it, the suggestions were fine but not so helpful to be worth the property theft risk, so I uninstalled it. You are not alone.
• la64710 4y ago
  It is great for starters but my experience it everything AI generates needs to be double and triple tested and almost always manually modified to do exactly what you want to do. The 40% number just seems to be a tall claim and unless the data is shared and verifiable I don’t really give a crap about these claims.
• marssaxman 4y ago
  I'm not worried. Automating our jobs away is part of what programmers do, and always has been, but somehow we never run out of work to do. I have not yet grown curious enough about Copilot to try it out; it seems to solve a problem I don't really have, since my productivity is never limited by typing speed. As you say, thinking and designing is the hard part.
• flykespice 4y ago
  I can't afford to use it but if I did, I would use it as moderate as possible. I look forward on the future of AI assisted coding tools, it could make us more productive on generating part of codes that we don't care much about, while leaving us time to deal with code that we do, manually.