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Yeah, you really need to experience it first hand to get to that "wow" moment. For me, that moment was when I was writing some code in my over-engineered codeba

Yeah, you really need to experience it first hand to get to that "wow" moment. For me, that moment was when I was writing some code in my over-engineered codebase, with some prematurely generalized abstractions that even I can barely understand. I'd pause for a second to think "wtf am I doing again?" and Copilot would suggest a whole block of code that aligned perfectly with my intent. This happened repeatedly and it felt like I was being guided to a solution. The incredible thing was that I hadn't even thought about it yet. It's like Copilot was thinking a step ahead of me. I found this effect to be most pronounced when writing tests. I think Copilot shines in codebases with static typing, clear interfaces, doctstrings and unit tests. That's really about the densest, most richly annotated context you could give to an LLM. And that's before adding capabilities for more well-defined reasoning about static languages, types, etc. - there is potential for it to get even better at this.

redhale 3y ago
Writing unit tests is the most effective use of copilot hands-down. For pure functions, it is 100% correct and complete essentially 100% of the time, allowing me to write descriptive test names and nothing more. Even when mocks or spies have to come into the picture, it is usually 95% accurate. The key is that you should always have the file you are testing open in an editor tab, as well as another test class that demonstrates the testing style you want it to emulate. Forget everything else about Copilot, it's worth the cost for this alone. Time writing tests reduced ~80%. They could remove all other functionality and rebrand it as Test Copilot, and they would still get my money.