7 ms·

Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? Maybe I'm one of the hangers on who refuses to use it, not out of IP concerns but because I'd hate for it to ca

Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? Maybe I'm one of the hangers on who refuses to use it, not out of IP concerns but because I'd hate for it to cause my skills to rot or for me to become too dependent on it. I do sometimes have GPT-4 write code for me, but somehow I feel like it's different reading and reviewing its code than to punch a few characters into my IDE and have code magically appear.

nadermx 3y ago
So you don't like autosuggest either? I could write out the rest of my search, or just type less
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Actually, I don't. I turn off most autosuggest, autofill, etc in practically every app I use.
- logifail 3y ago
  > So you don't like autosuggest either? I could write out the rest of my search, or just type less I'd like to think that we should all want to formulate our questions well. Having someone(something) complete our questions is like having someone interrupt you half-way through a thought and finish your sentence for you. For the one completing the thought, they think they're being helpful. For the one being interrupted, there's a decent chance it's a <wtf?> moment. Being able to form a complete thought by yourself is something that's important. Don't throw this away....
- stetrain 3y ago
  Depends on the implementation. I abhor systems that constantly flash text in your face that may or may not be the word you are typing. The iOS typing suggestions bar is the worst at this. It feels like trying to talk while listening to your own voice at a delay, or others shouting words at you that you think you might mean.
stavros 3y ago
I don't use Copilot because there's no plugin for it for my Vim version.
- esaym 3y ago
  Yea this.
- Zizizizz 3y ago
  Vim: https://github.com/github/copilot.vim https://github.com/github/copilot.vim Neovim: https://github.com/zbirenbaum/copilot.lua https://github.com/zbirenbaum/copilot.lua Neovim ChatGPT: https://github.com/jackMort/ChatGPT.nvim https://github.com/jackMort/ChatGPT.nvim
  - stavros 3y ago
    Thanks, it needs 9 and I have 8. I'll have to find a deb just for this, though, as Copilot is pretty handy.
graypegg 3y ago
I’ve dabbled but never actually committed to it, and I currently don’t have an active subscription or intend to try it out again anytime soon. I found it to just be… not how I wanted to work. I’m not sure it ever made me faster? Like it typed things for me, so there’s some savings there, but because I wasn’t precisely sure what all of this magic code does before I read thru it and renamed everything, it just felt like I was the copilot, reviewing the others work. It sure is cool but not how I want to work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
reaperducer 3y ago
I'm with you, but for different reasons. I'm sometimes asked to explain a piece of my code. If I told my boss, "I dunno. ChatGPT wrote that part, and to me it looks like it works OK" I'd probably be fired.
- evo_9 3y ago
  Perhaps you should ask ChatGPT to explain the code you are not clear on. It's a great opportunity to learn, and honestly that's part of the 'fun' of using CoPilot, I've learned some new things that I wasn't aware of. Mostly they're just newer syntactic sugar, but it's still good to keep up on a language's latest syntax / features.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    If your code is written by ChatGPT-n, and you can only explain it to your boss with ChatGPT-n, you will be replaced by ChatGPT-(n+1).
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      People said this type of thing about Visual Basic, and code-generating wizards, and using libraries instead of coding up your own binary trees, and so on. At some level somebody with engineering knowledge is going to have to understand the problem domain, the code, the data, the use cases, ancillary data stores, etc.
- henriquecm8 3y ago
  The way I use, I only accept suggestions that are what I was planning to type. For me, it usually only suggests single lines. So it's not hard to understand. So it is more like it is predicting what I already wanted to type, instead of being something like pair programming and giving snippets.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  You're suggesting a false dichotomy here: that one can understand their code or use ChatGPT but not both. Outside of Leetcode-style stuff it's never going to produce reams of correct code in non-trivial projects with so little supervision that this is a major problem.
nprateem 3y ago
Copilot just gets in my way by overriding my usual suggestions of class names, etc. I have it, but generally disabled. GPT writes larger blocks with more context, on demand. It's quite slow and ignores certain commands though which is irritating.
mattwad 3y ago
I use it every day 100 times, but it is just finishing the end of my line. Sometimes it comes in clutch when, for example i need a hex code for "Green", though. Based on this, I don't have any concerns about skill rot. I think we are a long ways away from it being able to write entire components or files for me - the amount of time I spend reviewing it and finding hidden bugs later on negates the benefits.
legulere 3y ago
Is it bad for your skills to rot if you don't need them anymore? I also don't know how to make fire without a lighter or a matchstick.
- spookie 3y ago
  Yes, it's bad to lose any skill.
  - hu3 3y ago
    I can drive a car but I can't ride a horse. Somewhere along my family tree we didn't pass this skill forward and it was lost.
    - x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
      _You_ can't lose a skill if you never had it.
  - Tade0 3y ago
    It happens all the time because as humans we are limited. Personally I see it as a rite of passage for a senior developer to take note of and embrace their own limits.
- arjonagelhout 3y ago
  You’ll grow dependent on a technology that might not be sustainable to run on the long term, or will increase in price. Once the product seizes to be affordable, you’d need to switch away and relearn how you did certain things. A similar thing happened with me using Adobe products at a student discount, only to realize its hefty $60 per month price tag was not something I was willing to spend. And if the gained productivity is only marginal at best, it’s better to not grow dependent on these technologies.
  - legulere 3y ago
    Isn't it way more likely that the technology will become more available and cheaper/for free? It doesn't really have a lock-in effect like a UI that you learn.
galkk 3y ago
Let me give you an example. I need to write a cron expression like once in couple years. So, I don't have working memory of it. So, to write it, I need to 1. Google "cron run something periodically". 2. Filter spam such as geeksforgeeks and irrelevant stackoverflows 3. Find either good enough approximation 4. If didn't work, go to cron man and start reading it. Example that I look for is 3rd from below in examples table https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12058_01/doc/doc.1014/e12030/cron_expressions.htm https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12058_01/doc/doc.1014/e12030/cro... OR I can go to chatgpt/copilot and directly ask what I need "Tell me a cron expression to run command on each third Monday of a month and explain it" and it will give me good enough approximation right from the start. I won't need to fight popups that will shame me for using adblockers, I won't need to go through tons of spam. I will get much better headstart, that will save my time and energy.
- morelisp 3y ago
  > Tell me a cron expression to run command on each third Monday of a month An LLM is probably the only thing which could tell you this.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    I gotta say, LLMs are an epic solution to things like cron expressions, regexes, and date-time formatting templates.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      Yes, I'm sure in 2-3 years I'll be finding plenty of regexes analogous to that cron expression, like one matching balanced parentheses.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Why would only an LLM be able to tell you this?
Minor49er 3y ago
I haven't used Copilot, but I have used ChatGPT to generate some demo HTML5 pages using canvas and animations. While the results didn't match what I described, it at least produced some interesting output that was (technically) functional. It helped guide me towards what I wanted to accomplish while providing some basic boilerplate code for me to run with
gertlex 3y ago
I'm playing with it, but not for work stuff, and not for everything. Really haven't done a ton, but has given me some useful insights. I'm normally a vim-only guy, so this has been a doubly-useful bit of experiment with using VSCode and using Copilot. The key thing to me is it's nice for certain kinds of work. Loosely/offhand, those categories: - Writing stuff from scratch: Sometimes useful. Particularly if it's a "write it, get it working, forget it" script. - "Polishing" code with close attention to detail/docs/implementation: This is an area where I'm more likely to immerse myself in understanding the code, and wouldn't be likely to use Copilot, as it would break the immersion. - Writing accessory scripts: E.g. a sqlite alembic migration script; I really am not a DB guy, so outlined some steps in a comment, read what Copilot wrote, tested it out, called it a day. - Adding stuff in an existing codebase: In cases where there's hundreds of functions across dozens of files, the idea of copilot knowing the functions and suggesting them for me, without my needing to look them up, sounds great. I'd definitely like to attempt this with work's codebase someday. I think a lot of precursor tools could do much of this; but I just never got in the habit of needing them. I spend more time with ChatGPT currently, but I'm pretty sure I'm nowhere near being a heavy user there, either. I think 75% of my peers are basically doing nothing with AI tools currently. (It helps that I do side projects a lot more than they do, too...)
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
I am using it; the process is writing documentation and getting things done. If your API is reasonable, it will figure things out. I am not using it for things I don't know how to write, I am using it for things I know how to solve relatively fast but don't want to bother writing completely. There are cases though where it came in clutch and implemented a solution much better than I could by leveraging some very hidden numpy function call that I couldn't find even if my life depended on it.
raincole 3y ago
> it's different reading and reviewing its code than to punch a few characters into my IDE and have code magically appear. I feel you missed something here. ChatGPT: reading and reviewing its code Copilot: punch a few characters into my IDE and have code magically appear... and you read and review the magically appeared code, just like you do with ChatGPT?
- ipaddr 3y ago
  or write comments and co-pilot will act like gpt
xwdv 3y ago
Senior engineer here, none of the strongest developers I know bother with it. It’s fairly useless if you know exactly what you’re doing.
lolinder 3y ago
For me, Copilot has had the opposite effect from skill rot: it's pretty lousy at producing big chunks of code so I tend to use it for small chunks where I have a pretty good sense for what I want to do. However, sometimes it surprises me by offering something that I wouldn't have chosen that turns out to be far better, and I learn new things from those suggestions. For example, I gave Copilot something like this: const textFile = longfile const numLines = I expected it to give me a regular expression that would count the number of new line characters, but instead it split the string on \n and asked for the length of that array. These are decent sized files (300ish lines) and this code is running in a hot loop over thousands of them, but I decided to give it a chance and benchmarked both choices. It turns out that even with all of the extra allocations, the regular expression solution was 4-5x slower than splitting and getting the length. Not something I would have guessed, but now I know.
- adalacelove 3y ago
  I think both solutions vs just counting the number of newlines are pretty bad
  - morelisp 3y ago
    You'll never achieve takeoff if you keep thinking like that.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Haha, yep, an iterator would definitely be faster than either! I'm coming from Kotlin where I expect there to be a standard library function for simple tasks like this, but I clearly need to get back in the habit of writing loops by hand.
- electroly 3y ago
  If you care about performance, those are both insane ways to count newlines. Try a loop of indexOf() and watch it absolutely spank the splitting method. That was the first thing that popped into my head, and in testing it appears to be 5x the speed of splitting (and 0x the memory consumption).
telotortium 3y ago
No, because my workplace bans it, so I don't find a subscription for personal use worth it. Before my workplace banned it, I used the free version last year, and I found it slightly useful, but not essential - more of a smart Autocomplete than anything truly intelligent. ChatGPT and the GPT API have been much more useful for my personal coding (mostly as an enhanced Stack Overflow).
peoplearepeople 3y ago
I don't know anyone who uses it anymore
godelski 3y ago
> Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? I think the big difference is what type of programming people do. LLMs are great at handing you code that is routine, but I find them problematic when I try to do anything even a bit uncommon. I spend more time debugging than it would take to write it myself. I think a lot of this confusion is coming down to treating coding as coding and not looking at tasks. The same way writing a fantasy novel doesn't make you good at writing poetry, or a legal document, or a technical report.
lycos 3y ago
I don't use it and have no interest in it myself, but I recognise the value it has for many others.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I started using it for some simple stuff at work and it was helpful to generate long annoying statements in a web backend. I recently started learning Go and I felt like I hated it, I couldn't make any mistakes or think about the syntax because co-pilot was constantly trying to impress me. One thing I really hate is it will always try to auto-complete my comments. Sorry robot, I am a divine being and these comment ramblings are mine alone.
davidkuennen 3y ago
I use it and not having it feels like there's something important (helpful) missing when coding.
pmontra 3y ago
I don't use Copilot but sometimes I ask ChatGPT to write some small algorithmic function. I describe the inputs and what it should do as I would do with you and most of the times it works. It saves me the time to check the reference. I keep working on the code calling that function while it's generating. When it doesn't do the right thing I attempt to explain me better. If I get a feeling that it's hallucinationg, I give up and write it myself.
bastardoperator 3y ago
How useful are your skills when people with less skills are creating at a higher value and velocity with arguably better code, more testing, etc... I think that's where we're going to get to. Young minds will geek out on AI, and they won't nearly be as good in terms of knowledge, but they'll produce at a rate that justifies the means. I think combining or crafting your offboard brain/prompts at this point is par for the course, or maybe even a no brainer. Take your knowledge, and things you don't like or don't pique your interest, give it to the robots. That's what I've been doing so I can focus more on the critical path. I don't trust any of these robots, but not everything they produce is bad, some of it is actually pretty good. I see this mentality a lot, and I don't understand it, but people seem to take satisfaction from doing things the hardest way. While I can appreciate the feeling of accomplishment, and being able to overcome an obstacle while learning, if there is a solution that takes less time to build and create while providing the same outcome, that tool is going to have a home in my tool chest.
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  Not GP. If Copilot/GPT produces stuff with subtle problems, and it always will, then it will not be better code than someone with skills. More testing? Generated by the same LLM? Sure, but it might be testing the wrong thing. I think that those with skills should lean on them. Let code monkeys use LLM's; experts should be human, not a fleshy bot feeding another bot and uncritically using the spew.
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    Humans produce code with subtle problems, and they always will, even with expert skills. Sure, but humans could be testing the wrong thing too. They should, but let's not pretend that experts or any human for that matter are infallible. I wouldn't refer to people as code monkeys, it's rude. I can see on the site listed in your profile you're having issues aligning your navigation <div> (left or center?). Like you I too make mistakes. In this case ChatGPT recommend using a <container>, while I'm not sure if it's the right path forward, it seems to fix the issue on your page keeping the <nav> left aligned.
johnisom2001 3y ago
> because I'd hate for it to cause my skills to rot or for me to become too dependent on it. You think it's bad now, imagine 5 years from now. This version of Copilot is just the beginning. Will you care about skill rot when everyone else around you knows the skills to effectively use the new generative AI models and is producing 5x?
JamesLeonis 3y ago
> Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? Nope. For what it's worth, I use Clojure(Script) these days, and working with the REPL is my preferred way to interactively "chat" with my program. I asked family member how they use AI for programming. He said its mostly ChatGPT for soft skills like emails or JIRA tickets, or rubber ducking a design problem. He doesn't use any AI tooling for development. It seems both authors recognize this as well.
JohnBooty 3y ago
I'd hate for it to cause my skills to rot Well, good news: it's nowhere near good or useful enough for that. Currently it's mostly helpful with boilerplate stuff and coding quiz style challenges. It doesn't know anything about which algorithm might be appropriate for a novel challenge, it doesn't know anything about your database or codebase, etc. My personal opinion so far is that this is going to be a very useful tool. A big leap will occur if/when it can work in tandem with knowledge of your local code+data. However I don't see it ever replacing higher level reasoning or rotting one's skills. Unless the "skill" in question is memorizing boilerplate stuff.
marssaxman 3y ago
I have not tried it yet, and don't feel much interest. Typing in code is not much of a bottleneck for me; I spend far more time reading, thinking, and discussing than I do writing.

nadermx 3y ago

So you don't like autosuggest either? I could write out the rest of my search, or just type less

ravenstine 3y ago
Actually, I don't. I turn off most autosuggest, autofill, etc in practically every app I use.
logifail 3y ago
> So you don't like autosuggest either? I could write out the rest of my search, or just type less I'd like to think that we should all want to formulate our questions well. Having someone(something) complete our questions is like having someone interrupt you half-way through a thought and finish your sentence for you. For the one completing the thought, they think they're being helpful. For the one being interrupted, there's a decent chance it's a <wtf?> moment. Being able to form a complete thought by yourself is something that's important. Don't throw this away....
stetrain 3y ago
Depends on the implementation. I abhor systems that constantly flash text in your face that may or may not be the word you are typing. The iOS typing suggestions bar is the worst at this. It feels like trying to talk while listening to your own voice at a delay, or others shouting words at you that you think you might mean.

stavros 3y ago

I don't use Copilot because there's no plugin for it for my Vim version.

esaym 3y ago
Yea this.
Zizizizz 3y ago
Vim: https://github.com/github/copilot.vim https://github.com/github/copilot.vim Neovim: https://github.com/zbirenbaum/copilot.lua https://github.com/zbirenbaum/copilot.lua Neovim ChatGPT: https://github.com/jackMort/ChatGPT.nvim https://github.com/jackMort/ChatGPT.nvim
- stavros 3y ago
  Thanks, it needs 9 and I have 8. I'll have to find a deb just for this, though, as Copilot is pretty handy.

graypegg 3y ago

I’ve dabbled but never actually committed to it, and I currently don’t have an active subscription or intend to try it out again anytime soon. I found it to just be… not how I wanted to work. I’m not sure it ever made me faster? Like it typed things for me, so there’s some savings there, but because I wasn’t precisely sure what all of this magic code does before I read thru it and renamed everything, it just felt like I was the copilot, reviewing the others work. It sure is cool but not how I want to work.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

reaperducer 3y ago

I'm with you, but for different reasons. I'm sometimes asked to explain a piece of my code. If I told my boss, "I dunno. ChatGPT wrote that part, and to me it looks like it works OK" I'd probably be fired.

evo_9 3y ago
Perhaps you should ask ChatGPT to explain the code you are not clear on. It's a great opportunity to learn, and honestly that's part of the 'fun' of using CoPilot, I've learned some new things that I wasn't aware of. Mostly they're just newer syntactic sugar, but it's still good to keep up on a language's latest syntax / features.
- klyrs 3y ago
  If your code is written by ChatGPT-n, and you can only explain it to your boss with ChatGPT-n, you will be replaced by ChatGPT-(n+1).
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    People said this type of thing about Visual Basic, and code-generating wizards, and using libraries instead of coding up your own binary trees, and so on. At some level somebody with engineering knowledge is going to have to understand the problem domain, the code, the data, the use cases, ancillary data stores, etc.
henriquecm8 3y ago
The way I use, I only accept suggestions that are what I was planning to type. For me, it usually only suggests single lines. So it's not hard to understand. So it is more like it is predicting what I already wanted to type, instead of being something like pair programming and giving snippets.
JohnBooty 3y ago
You're suggesting a false dichotomy here: that one can understand their code or use ChatGPT but not both. Outside of Leetcode-style stuff it's never going to produce reams of correct code in non-trivial projects with so little supervision that this is a major problem.

nprateem 3y ago

Copilot just gets in my way by overriding my usual suggestions of class names, etc. I have it, but generally disabled. GPT writes larger blocks with more context, on demand. It's quite slow and ignores certain commands though which is irritating.

mattwad 3y ago

I use it every day 100 times, but it is just finishing the end of my line. Sometimes it comes in clutch when, for example i need a hex code for "Green", though. Based on this, I don't have any concerns about skill rot. I think we are a long ways away from it being able to write entire components or files for me - the amount of time I spend reviewing it and finding hidden bugs later on negates the benefits.

legulere 3y ago

Is it bad for your skills to rot if you don't need them anymore? I also don't know how to make fire without a lighter or a matchstick.

spookie 3y ago
Yes, it's bad to lose any skill.
- hu3 3y ago
  I can drive a car but I can't ride a horse. Somewhere along my family tree we didn't pass this skill forward and it was lost.
  - x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
    _You_ can't lose a skill if you never had it.
- Tade0 3y ago
  It happens all the time because as humans we are limited. Personally I see it as a rite of passage for a senior developer to take note of and embrace their own limits.
arjonagelhout 3y ago
You’ll grow dependent on a technology that might not be sustainable to run on the long term, or will increase in price. Once the product seizes to be affordable, you’d need to switch away and relearn how you did certain things. A similar thing happened with me using Adobe products at a student discount, only to realize its hefty $60 per month price tag was not something I was willing to spend. And if the gained productivity is only marginal at best, it’s better to not grow dependent on these technologies.
- legulere 3y ago
  Isn't it way more likely that the technology will become more available and cheaper/for free? It doesn't really have a lock-in effect like a UI that you learn.

galkk 3y ago

Let me give you an example. I need to write a cron expression like once in couple years. So, I don't have working memory of it. So, to write it, I need to 1. Google "cron run something periodically". 2. Filter spam such as geeksforgeeks and irrelevant stackoverflows 3. Find either good enough approximation 4. If didn't work, go to cron man and start reading it. Example that I look for is 3rd from below in examples table https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12058_01/doc/doc.1014/e12030/cron_expressions.htm https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E12058_01/doc/doc.1014/e12030/cro... OR I can go to chatgpt/copilot and directly ask what I need "Tell me a cron expression to run command on each third Monday of a month and explain it" and it will give me good enough approximation right from the start. I won't need to fight popups that will shame me for using adblockers, I won't need to go through tons of spam. I will get much better headstart, that will save my time and energy.

morelisp 3y ago
> Tell me a cron expression to run command on each third Monday of a month An LLM is probably the only thing which could tell you this.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  I gotta say, LLMs are an epic solution to things like cron expressions, regexes, and date-time formatting templates.
  - morelisp 3y ago
    Yes, I'm sure in 2-3 years I'll be finding plenty of regexes analogous to that cron expression, like one matching balanced parentheses.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Why would only an LLM be able to tell you this?

Minor49er 3y ago

I haven't used Copilot, but I have used ChatGPT to generate some demo HTML5 pages using canvas and animations. While the results didn't match what I described, it at least produced some interesting output that was (technically) functional. It helped guide me towards what I wanted to accomplish while providing some basic boilerplate code for me to run with

gertlex 3y ago

I'm playing with it, but not for work stuff, and not for everything. Really haven't done a ton, but has given me some useful insights. I'm normally a vim-only guy, so this has been a doubly-useful bit of experiment with using VSCode and using Copilot. The key thing to me is it's nice for certain kinds of work. Loosely/offhand, those categories: - Writing stuff from scratch: Sometimes useful. Particularly if it's a "write it, get it working, forget it" script. - "Polishing" code with close attention to detail/docs/implementation: This is an area where I'm more likely to immerse myself in understanding the code, and wouldn't be likely to use Copilot, as it would break the immersion. - Writing accessory scripts: E.g. a sqlite alembic migration script; I really am not a DB guy, so outlined some steps in a comment, read what Copilot wrote, tested it out, called it a day. - Adding stuff in an existing codebase: In cases where there's hundreds of functions across dozens of files, the idea of copilot knowing the functions and suggesting them for me, without my needing to look them up, sounds great. I'd definitely like to attempt this with work's codebase someday. I think a lot of precursor tools could do much of this; but I just never got in the habit of needing them. I spend more time with ChatGPT currently, but I'm pretty sure I'm nowhere near being a heavy user there, either. I think 75% of my peers are basically doing nothing with AI tools currently. (It helps that I do side projects a lot more than they do, too...)

PartiallyTyped 3y ago

I am using it; the process is writing documentation and getting things done. If your API is reasonable, it will figure things out. I am not using it for things I don't know how to write, I am using it for things I know how to solve relatively fast but don't want to bother writing completely. There are cases though where it came in clutch and implemented a solution much better than I could by leveraging some very hidden numpy function call that I couldn't find even if my life depended on it.

raincole 3y ago

> it's different reading and reviewing its code than to punch a few characters into my IDE and have code magically appear. I feel you missed something here. ChatGPT: reading and reviewing its code Copilot: punch a few characters into my IDE and have code magically appear... and you read and review the magically appeared code, just like you do with ChatGPT?

ipaddr 3y ago
or write comments and co-pilot will act like gpt

xwdv 3y ago

Senior engineer here, none of the strongest developers I know bother with it. It’s fairly useless if you know exactly what you’re doing.

lolinder 3y ago

For me, Copilot has had the opposite effect from skill rot: it's pretty lousy at producing big chunks of code so I tend to use it for small chunks where I have a pretty good sense for what I want to do. However, sometimes it surprises me by offering something that I wouldn't have chosen that turns out to be far better, and I learn new things from those suggestions. For example, I gave Copilot something like this: const textFile = longfile const numLines = I expected it to give me a regular expression that would count the number of new line characters, but instead it split the string on \n and asked for the length of that array. These are decent sized files (300ish lines) and this code is running in a hot loop over thousands of them, but I decided to give it a chance and benchmarked both choices. It turns out that even with all of the extra allocations, the regular expression solution was 4-5x slower than splitting and getting the length. Not something I would have guessed, but now I know.

adalacelove 3y ago
I think both solutions vs just counting the number of newlines are pretty bad
- morelisp 3y ago
  You'll never achieve takeoff if you keep thinking like that.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Haha, yep, an iterator would definitely be faster than either! I'm coming from Kotlin where I expect there to be a standard library function for simple tasks like this, but I clearly need to get back in the habit of writing loops by hand.
electroly 3y ago
If you care about performance, those are both insane ways to count newlines. Try a loop of indexOf() and watch it absolutely spank the splitting method. That was the first thing that popped into my head, and in testing it appears to be 5x the speed of splitting (and 0x the memory consumption).

telotortium 3y ago

No, because my workplace bans it, so I don't find a subscription for personal use worth it. Before my workplace banned it, I used the free version last year, and I found it slightly useful, but not essential - more of a smart Autocomplete than anything truly intelligent. ChatGPT and the GPT API have been much more useful for my personal coding (mostly as an enhanced Stack Overflow).

peoplearepeople 3y ago

I don't know anyone who uses it anymore

godelski 3y ago

> Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? I think the big difference is what type of programming people do. LLMs are great at handing you code that is routine, but I find them problematic when I try to do anything even a bit uncommon. I spend more time debugging than it would take to write it myself. I think a lot of this confusion is coming down to treating coding as coding and not looking at tasks. The same way writing a fantasy novel doesn't make you good at writing poetry, or a legal document, or a technical report.

lycos 3y ago

I don't use it and have no interest in it myself, but I recognise the value it has for many others.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

I started using it for some simple stuff at work and it was helpful to generate long annoying statements in a web backend. I recently started learning Go and I felt like I hated it, I couldn't make any mistakes or think about the syntax because co-pilot was constantly trying to impress me. One thing I really hate is it will always try to auto-complete my comments. Sorry robot, I am a divine being and these comment ramblings are mine alone.

davidkuennen 3y ago

I use it and not having it feels like there's something important (helpful) missing when coding.

pmontra 3y ago

I don't use Copilot but sometimes I ask ChatGPT to write some small algorithmic function. I describe the inputs and what it should do as I would do with you and most of the times it works. It saves me the time to check the reference. I keep working on the code calling that function while it's generating. When it doesn't do the right thing I attempt to explain me better. If I get a feeling that it's hallucinationg, I give up and write it myself.

bastardoperator 3y ago

How useful are your skills when people with less skills are creating at a higher value and velocity with arguably better code, more testing, etc... I think that's where we're going to get to. Young minds will geek out on AI, and they won't nearly be as good in terms of knowledge, but they'll produce at a rate that justifies the means. I think combining or crafting your offboard brain/prompts at this point is par for the course, or maybe even a no brainer. Take your knowledge, and things you don't like or don't pique your interest, give it to the robots. That's what I've been doing so I can focus more on the critical path. I don't trust any of these robots, but not everything they produce is bad, some of it is actually pretty good. I see this mentality a lot, and I don't understand it, but people seem to take satisfaction from doing things the hardest way. While I can appreciate the feeling of accomplishment, and being able to overcome an obstacle while learning, if there is a solution that takes less time to build and create while providing the same outcome, that tool is going to have a home in my tool chest.

gavinhoward 3y ago
Not GP. If Copilot/GPT produces stuff with subtle problems, and it always will, then it will not be better code than someone with skills. More testing? Generated by the same LLM? Sure, but it might be testing the wrong thing. I think that those with skills should lean on them. Let code monkeys use LLM's; experts should be human, not a fleshy bot feeding another bot and uncritically using the spew.
- bastardoperator 3y ago
  Humans produce code with subtle problems, and they always will, even with expert skills. Sure, but humans could be testing the wrong thing too. They should, but let's not pretend that experts or any human for that matter are infallible. I wouldn't refer to people as code monkeys, it's rude. I can see on the site listed in your profile you're having issues aligning your navigation <div> (left or center?). Like you I too make mistakes. In this case ChatGPT recommend using a <container>, while I'm not sure if it's the right path forward, it seems to fix the issue on your page keeping the <nav> left aligned.

johnisom2001 3y ago

> because I'd hate for it to cause my skills to rot or for me to become too dependent on it. You think it's bad now, imagine 5 years from now. This version of Copilot is just the beginning. Will you care about skill rot when everyone else around you knows the skills to effectively use the new generative AI models and is producing 5x?

JamesLeonis 3y ago

> Is nearly everyone using Copilot at this point? Nope. For what it's worth, I use Clojure(Script) these days, and working with the REPL is my preferred way to interactively "chat" with my program. I asked family member how they use AI for programming. He said its mostly ChatGPT for soft skills like emails or JIRA tickets, or rubber ducking a design problem. He doesn't use any AI tooling for development. It seems both authors recognize this as well.

JohnBooty 3y ago

I'd hate for it to cause my skills to rot Well, good news: it's nowhere near good or useful enough for that. Currently it's mostly helpful with boilerplate stuff and coding quiz style challenges. It doesn't know anything about which algorithm might be appropriate for a novel challenge, it doesn't know anything about your database or codebase, etc. My personal opinion so far is that this is going to be a very useful tool. A big leap will occur if/when it can work in tandem with knowledge of your local code+data. However I don't see it ever replacing higher level reasoning or rotting one's skills. Unless the "skill" in question is memorizing boilerplate stuff.

marssaxman 3y ago

I have not tried it yet, and don't feel much interest. Typing in code is not much of a bottleneck for me; I spend far more time reading, thinking, and discussing than I do writing.