3 ms·

Completely agree. When I talk to others about Github Copilot/ChatGPT however, I am rather surprised to hear some of the criticisms. As in, it's unreliable, it's

Completely agree. When I talk to others about Github Copilot/ChatGPT however, I am rather surprised to hear some of the criticisms. As in, it's unreliable, it's wrong, not good for beginners, etc. I don't understand that criticism at all. Yes, it's occasionally, perhaps frequently wrong, but so is virtually any other source of information. What's the alternative? Well, you Google your way around half a dozen websites, read through forum posts, bloated/incomplete doc websites, Q&A sites, etc. It's absolute hell to me, stuff that can take 10-15min on average to deal with, so comparatively using LLMs to not is like light and day. Maybe it's due in part to people being inexperienced and lacking the ability to independently judge whether content seems right or not, so I will admit you do need to be a bit of an expert to fully utilize these tools. But even as a beginner--when I started coding some 10 years ago, I'd have killed for something like ChatGPT. Had some programming problem you needed to solve? You better hope that someone wrote something about it online, that it's on StackOverflow or been discussed on some other discussion board. Otherwise, it's up to you to splunk into StackOverflow, wait a week or two, hope you don't get ignored/downvoted, or try to find some IRC channel to post the question to. Comparatively having the ability nowadays to talk to a AI about the most niche programming concepts in your specific use case, in English, without being judged? It's straight up magical to me.

irrational 3y ago
I started coding back in the days when literally all we had were physical book documentation and maybe a physical book textbook or how-to book. Having the internet certainly is faster. Having copilot is even faster. I wonder what the next leap forward in speed will be? Back in the days of physical books, I did not foresee online documentation or things like stackoverflow. In the days of stackoverflow, I did not foresee something like copilot. So I assume we cannot yet foresee what will be the next big thing.

irrational 3y ago

I started coding back in the days when literally all we had were physical book documentation and maybe a physical book textbook or how-to book. Having the internet certainly is faster. Having copilot is even faster. I wonder what the next leap forward in speed will be? Back in the days of physical books, I did not foresee online documentation or things like stackoverflow. In the days of stackoverflow, I did not foresee something like copilot. So I assume we cannot yet foresee what will be the next big thing.