10 ms·

Visual Studio’s IntelliSense list can now steer GitHub Copilot code completions

123 points by samwillis 3y ago

samwillis 3y ago
This was my only real complaint about Copilot, very happy for this improvement. In hindsight I had noticed things seemed better in the last week when working in a TS codebase.
Hrun0 3y ago
This is a great improvement, but all the new AI tools are obviously still in their infancy.I can't wait to see how it will look a couple of years from now!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hcayless 3y ago
That’s good. It really did feel like they were fighting each other sometimes.
toastal 3y ago
Reminder: https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/
- w0m 3y ago
  it's amazing how much the sheer usefulness has (mostly) kept the ethical criticisms down.
  - toastal 3y ago
    There’s a new article every day on HN talking about the ethics of AI and many of them call out Microsoft GitHub’s Copilot, so I guess you've been missing a lot.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  If suits like that succeed, the US will fall way behind.
qumpis 3y ago
Looks great. Is this also coming to vscode? Also, the answer might be an obvious 'no', given a lack of features compared to vscode, but is it coming to pycharm?
- aaronchyim 3y ago
  Hang tight. github:ayim
llimos 3y ago
Microsoft are killing it. Perhaps surprisingly, they seem to be the only ones who really "get it".
- tredre3 3y ago
  > Perhaps surprisingly Surely this is surprising only to very young people? Remember Developers Developers Developers? Microsoft has always had, by far, the best development experience of all the major platforms. Their dev tools have been top notch since the 90s. Of course nowadays CLion/Rider do provide a very similar desktop dev experience, so clearly Jetbrains also gets it. But it can't compete with how well integrated VS is with Windows in my experience.
  - zenapollo 3y ago
    Not just young people. Windows is still bad software - eg i apparently cannot turn off bing search in my moms start menu. Also behavior like forcing apps (eg teams) to run at startup. ubiquitous telemetry (pretty much full on spying), default settings in edge. I could go on. I have been massively impressed with VS code, it’s good software. Maybe they “get it” re developers. But as a consumer, i don’t think they do get it. I think their fans must have Stockholm syndrome.
    - tredre3 3y ago
      Yes Microsoft's is treating its users poorly and their software is generally pretty bad (par for the course for silicon valley these days, unfortunately). But why must any mention of Microsoft devolve to that commentary? We were discussing their dev tools which were, and are, very good. Let's leave it at that.
  - shortcake27 3y ago
    I think it depends on your background. A decade ago, web developer experience for non-MS stacks on Windows was significantly inferior to MacOS, mainly because all the best tooling was *nix based. I don’t know what the situation is like today as I haven’t touched Windows in years, but my opinion of Microsoft DX is very low. In fact, the thought of developing on Windows is so visceral that I wouldn’t even consider a job if I were forced to use Windows. Conversely, if you’ve been developing within the MS ecosystem then I bet you’ll have a completely different opinion.
darklycan51 3y ago
I switched from Java to .NET recently due to a new job and man... IntelliJ is just so much... "better" than Visual Studio... at least out of the box, especially the tab management is a nightmare. I will say however, it is impressive how good IntelliSense is, I hadn't had the opportunity to see how good it was but damn.
- pleb_nz 3y ago
  I'm a fan of rider, it's my go-to for anything dotnet and after a few years of rider usage I really don't enjoy VS like I used to when I have to dive back into using VS.
  - veec_cas_tant 3y ago
    Agree - Rider has provided a much more enjoyable programming experience for me as well. It does lag behind in supporting some things though, such as early Blazor, but I think it is mostly caught up now.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    Rider is the 1 good IDE for .NET.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  I am a long time Visual Studio user who is trying to switch to Rider, and used IntelliJ IDEA previously quite a bit. When you refer to tabs, I don't know what are you talking about. I struggle with moving tabs around in Rider. In fact, it tends to glitch sometimes rendering IDE inoperable until restarted. I don't see any differences in handling them. On the contrary, I find the UI of debugging tools much better in Visual Studio. At least the default Rider layout dumps a lot of stuff (call stack, variables and immediate) in the same pane, and it just does not work for me. I don't need immediate a lot of time. I like multiple panes of variables/watches, and I like to be able to switch between individual debugging panes while keeping others. E.g. I use both watches + stack and watches + debug output and switch often, and in the Rider I don't know how to do that.
- pjmlp 3y ago
Someone1234 3y ago
Both IntelliSense and IntelliCode are great. Combine them with Roslynator, and they're even better. But Copilot is half-baked/broken in full Visual Studio. It is a "AAA" experience in VSCode, but worse than useless in Visual Studio. After doing the trial I went out and got a ChatGPT Plus subscription instead for twice the price, no regrets. Currently, rated 2 stars on the marketplace[0] with this recent review (not from me): > Sorry but this is useless. I will try in the future but now I stick to ChatGPT. Strongly agreed. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilotvs&ssr=false#review-details https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c...
- evntdrvn 3y ago
  Yeah, it’s a big bummer that VSCode is getting the attention first it seems. For instance there’s nothing for Vs equivalent to the VSCode Copilot Labs plugin, which brings a whole bunch of new useful functionality.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    Visual Studio is and should be deprecated. It doesn't run on most platforms, has an awful extension ecosystem and a terrible interface in general. It does have a good amount of features that can turn out to be useful, but the much worse core editing experience makes up for that.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      VS sucks, sure, but Microsoft doesn't consider it to be deprecated.
    - khalladay 3y ago
      What languages are you using day to day? I've been in games for a decade, and spend about 90% of my day writing c++ (the rest writing hlsl), and I can say with certainty that Visual Studio is both not deprecated, and pretty good actually. But maybe its the case that outside of my niche VS falls down or the other options are so good that they make VS seem old fashioned.
thedougd 3y ago
Will IntelliSense now provide bounds for the CoPilot predictions? I find Copilot hallucinates method signatures that don’t actually exist in the SDK. IntelliSense of course knows that.
- Joe_Boogz 3y ago
  If this is what is coming it sounds incredible
  - aaronchyim 3y ago
    V1.84 or higher of the VS extension will have this: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilotvs&ssr=false#review-details https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c...
- aaronchyim 3y ago
  Hey! I worked on this - yes, the method/IntelliSense selection is bound. We measure model accuracy through accept rate of predictions and we've seen a jump after introducing this. Anything after the method/intellisense selection, however, isn't bound.
brynjolf 3y ago
I telli code has a new way where you can click a API or Nuget and it brings examples of code using that API FROM Github. Super useful since you can see different ways people use them, for example how people would use an API synchronous or asynchronous. The bad thing is, it brings all code regardless of license So it will happily bring you GPLv3 code as an example. Not a good idea to study code like that if you work on closed source. Also it doesn't seem to ask for permission to use the examples.

123 points by samwillis 3y ago

This was my only real complaint about Copilot, very happy for this improvement. In hindsight I had noticed things seemed better in the last week when working in a TS codebase.

Hrun0 3y ago

This is a great improvement, but all the new AI tools are obviously still in their infancy.I can't wait to see how it will look a couple of years from now!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hcayless 3y ago

That’s good. It really did feel like they were fighting each other sometimes.

toastal 3y ago

Reminder: https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/

w0m 3y ago
it's amazing how much the sheer usefulness has (mostly) kept the ethical criticisms down.
- toastal 3y ago
  There’s a new article every day on HN talking about the ethics of AI and many of them call out Microsoft GitHub’s Copilot, so I guess you've been missing a lot.
_ea1k 3y ago
If suits like that succeed, the US will fall way behind.

qumpis 3y ago

Looks great. Is this also coming to vscode? Also, the answer might be an obvious 'no', given a lack of features compared to vscode, but is it coming to pycharm?

aaronchyim 3y ago
Hang tight. github:ayim

llimos 3y ago

Microsoft are killing it. Perhaps surprisingly, they seem to be the only ones who really "get it".

tredre3 3y ago
> Perhaps surprisingly Surely this is surprising only to very young people? Remember Developers Developers Developers? Microsoft has always had, by far, the best development experience of all the major platforms. Their dev tools have been top notch since the 90s. Of course nowadays CLion/Rider do provide a very similar desktop dev experience, so clearly Jetbrains also gets it. But it can't compete with how well integrated VS is with Windows in my experience.
- zenapollo 3y ago
  Not just young people. Windows is still bad software - eg i apparently cannot turn off bing search in my moms start menu. Also behavior like forcing apps (eg teams) to run at startup. ubiquitous telemetry (pretty much full on spying), default settings in edge. I could go on. I have been massively impressed with VS code, it’s good software. Maybe they “get it” re developers. But as a consumer, i don’t think they do get it. I think their fans must have Stockholm syndrome.
  - tredre3 3y ago
    Yes Microsoft's is treating its users poorly and their software is generally pretty bad (par for the course for silicon valley these days, unfortunately). But why must any mention of Microsoft devolve to that commentary? We were discussing their dev tools which were, and are, very good. Let's leave it at that.
- shortcake27 3y ago
  I think it depends on your background. A decade ago, web developer experience for non-MS stacks on Windows was significantly inferior to MacOS, mainly because all the best tooling was *nix based. I don’t know what the situation is like today as I haven’t touched Windows in years, but my opinion of Microsoft DX is very low. In fact, the thought of developing on Windows is so visceral that I wouldn’t even consider a job if I were forced to use Windows. Conversely, if you’ve been developing within the MS ecosystem then I bet you’ll have a completely different opinion.

darklycan51 3y ago

I switched from Java to .NET recently due to a new job and man... IntelliJ is just so much... "better" than Visual Studio... at least out of the box, especially the tab management is a nightmare. I will say however, it is impressive how good IntelliSense is, I hadn't had the opportunity to see how good it was but damn.

pleb_nz 3y ago
I'm a fan of rider, it's my go-to for anything dotnet and after a few years of rider usage I really don't enjoy VS like I used to when I have to dive back into using VS.
- veec_cas_tant 3y ago
  Agree - Rider has provided a much more enjoyable programming experience for me as well. It does lag behind in supporting some things though, such as early Blazor, but I think it is mostly caught up now.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  Rider is the 1 good IDE for .NET.
lostmsu 3y ago
I am a long time Visual Studio user who is trying to switch to Rider, and used IntelliJ IDEA previously quite a bit. When you refer to tabs, I don't know what are you talking about. I struggle with moving tabs around in Rider. In fact, it tends to glitch sometimes rendering IDE inoperable until restarted. I don't see any differences in handling them. On the contrary, I find the UI of debugging tools much better in Visual Studio. At least the default Rider layout dumps a lot of stuff (call stack, variables and immediate) in the same pane, and it just does not work for me. I don't need immediate a lot of time. I like multiple panes of variables/watches, and I like to be able to switch between individual debugging panes while keeping others. E.g. I use both watches + stack and watches + debug output and switch often, and in the Rider I don't know how to do that.
pjmlp 3y ago

Someone1234 3y ago

Both IntelliSense and IntelliCode are great. Combine them with Roslynator, and they're even better. But Copilot is half-baked/broken in full Visual Studio. It is a "AAA" experience in VSCode, but worse than useless in Visual Studio. After doing the trial I went out and got a ChatGPT Plus subscription instead for twice the price, no regrets. Currently, rated 2 stars on the marketplace[0] with this recent review (not from me): > Sorry but this is useless. I will try in the future but now I stick to ChatGPT. Strongly agreed. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilotvs&ssr=false#review-details https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c...

evntdrvn 3y ago
Yeah, it’s a big bummer that VSCode is getting the attention first it seems. For instance there’s nothing for Vs equivalent to the VSCode Copilot Labs plugin, which brings a whole bunch of new useful functionality.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  Visual Studio is and should be deprecated. It doesn't run on most platforms, has an awful extension ecosystem and a terrible interface in general. It does have a good amount of features that can turn out to be useful, but the much worse core editing experience makes up for that.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    VS sucks, sure, but Microsoft doesn't consider it to be deprecated.
  - khalladay 3y ago
    What languages are you using day to day? I've been in games for a decade, and spend about 90% of my day writing c++ (the rest writing hlsl), and I can say with certainty that Visual Studio is both not deprecated, and pretty good actually. But maybe its the case that outside of my niche VS falls down or the other options are so good that they make VS seem old fashioned.

thedougd 3y ago

Will IntelliSense now provide bounds for the CoPilot predictions? I find Copilot hallucinates method signatures that don’t actually exist in the SDK. IntelliSense of course knows that.

Joe_Boogz 3y ago
If this is what is coming it sounds incredible
- aaronchyim 3y ago
  V1.84 or higher of the VS extension will have this: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilotvs&ssr=false#review-details https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c...
aaronchyim 3y ago
Hey! I worked on this - yes, the method/IntelliSense selection is bound. We measure model accuracy through accept rate of predictions and we've seen a jump after introducing this. Anything after the method/intellisense selection, however, isn't bound.

brynjolf 3y ago

I telli code has a new way where you can click a API or Nuget and it brings examples of code using that API FROM Github. Super useful since you can see different ways people use them, for example how people would use an API synchronous or asynchronous. The bad thing is, it brings all code regardless of license So it will happily bring you GPLv3 code as an example. Not a good idea to study code like that if you work on closed source. Also it doesn't seem to ask for permission to use the examples.