5 ms·

I think of them as a more intelligent autocomplete. I don’t lean on them too heavily but I find that they make my life 5% easier by autocompleting based on styl

I think of them as a more intelligent autocomplete. I don’t lean on them too heavily but I find that they make my life 5% easier by autocompleting based on style and known names of things versus relying wholly on the LSP. (Copilot) On the GPT-4 side I’ve had great luck with dealing with complex SQL/BigQuery queries. I will explain a problem, offer my schema or a psql trigger and my goals on how to augment it and it’s basically spot on every time. Helps me when I know what I want to do but don’t know precisely how to achieve it.

jvanderbot 3y ago
Yeah I think this captures my experience well. Not so much copilot as administrative assistant for my editor.
swasheck 3y ago
a more intuitive search as well. i am going to fly to paris in april and wanted to know what time it would be in denver when i landed. chatgpt was better-suited to the task than a multi-step duckbingle search
- randcraw 3y ago
  A Google search could do that 20 years ago.
- sm_costanza 3y ago
  I personally will never use the flight time zone related queries anymore. Almost like it didn’t know how time zones worked.
nextos 3y ago
I think the real power will come when generative models get combined with e.g. refinement types, which are more or less analogous to contracts. Imagine, you decompose a problem into some functions with some contracts, and you get implementations for free. Plus, they will be guaranteed to match the specification! I was discussing this with GitHub when they were hiring for Copilot, but understandably they wanted to get the basic functionality right first. I think it is the next step, and a very interesting topic for a startup or OpenAI et al. to tackle. It has the potential to make programming both more robust and faster, possibly bringing us closer to the correctness levels of classical engineering disciplines.
- sshine 3y ago
  Similarly, Stephen Wolfram elaborated in a Lex Fridman interview on a combination of having GPT express computational language (like Wolfram Alpha).
penjelly 3y ago
i find the inline suggestions of copilot distracting in any but the most mundane of cases. I know you can disable them but it still feels like it should be enabled instead of hotkeyed
yesguidance 3y ago
Me too. I'm writing a compiler for fun and its extremely helpful to have it auto complete entire simple functions, like converting AST nodes to a string representation for example.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  Doesn't it defeat the purpose of writing a compiler for fun if ChatGPT is going to write most of it?
  - butterandguns 3y ago
    Never done it myself, but I imagine understanding how the components all fit together is more valuable/fun than dealing with the minutiae of every function.
  - fzzzy 3y ago
    I don't think the fun part is actually pressing on the keyboard.
mtriassi 3y ago
This feels more or less in line with what my team has found, we gave everyone a copilot seat in our Github org, and anecdotally speaking it feels like we've seen roughly a 5-10% increase in productivity. This is of course self reported and not measured against any metrics. Assuming we're right about that, its an easy sell when we account for what our internal hourly rate is. we also found the same as the OP, It's good for simple problems or boilerplate, not great for more complex problems.
- b20000 3y ago
  what is the cost of analyzing the proposed solution and fixing it so it does what you want and how does that compare to not using AI and writing the code yourself?
  - Smeevy 3y ago
    That's an excellent question. I'm typically able to stay focused on a task in spite of distractions, but working with generated nonsense while coding something new has derailed me quite a few times. The novelty has definitely worn off for me, at least.
- jasonjmcghee 3y ago
  I use copilot and write a whole lot of code every day. It's very very hard for me to believe anyone could get a 5-10% boost in productivity. It's often incorrect and when it is correct, it's often trivial. It is a value add, but I'd put it closer to 0.5% if that. Over, say, 8 hours of coding time, it might save me a couple of minutes total. Which, from a company expense perspective is still worth it, but an order of magnitude less than your anecdote. It's very hard for me to envision how copilot could save someone that kind of time.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    Interesting, the experience is very different for me. What language are you working with? I find it to be pretty strong in my Python and JS projects.
thunkshift1 3y ago
Is it worth paying 20$ for 5% improvement
- fiprisoner 3y ago
  Unless your time is borderline worthless, obviously yes.

jvanderbot 3y ago

Yeah I think this captures my experience well. Not so much copilot as administrative assistant for my editor.

swasheck 3y ago

a more intuitive search as well. i am going to fly to paris in april and wanted to know what time it would be in denver when i landed. chatgpt was better-suited to the task than a multi-step duckbingle search

randcraw 3y ago
A Google search could do that 20 years ago.
sm_costanza 3y ago
I personally will never use the flight time zone related queries anymore. Almost like it didn’t know how time zones worked.

nextos 3y ago

I think the real power will come when generative models get combined with e.g. refinement types, which are more or less analogous to contracts. Imagine, you decompose a problem into some functions with some contracts, and you get implementations for free. Plus, they will be guaranteed to match the specification! I was discussing this with GitHub when they were hiring for Copilot, but understandably they wanted to get the basic functionality right first. I think it is the next step, and a very interesting topic for a startup or OpenAI et al. to tackle. It has the potential to make programming both more robust and faster, possibly bringing us closer to the correctness levels of classical engineering disciplines.

sshine 3y ago
Similarly, Stephen Wolfram elaborated in a Lex Fridman interview on a combination of having GPT express computational language (like Wolfram Alpha).

penjelly 3y ago

i find the inline suggestions of copilot distracting in any but the most mundane of cases. I know you can disable them but it still feels like it should be enabled instead of hotkeyed

yesguidance 3y ago

Me too. I'm writing a compiler for fun and its extremely helpful to have it auto complete entire simple functions, like converting AST nodes to a string representation for example.

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
Doesn't it defeat the purpose of writing a compiler for fun if ChatGPT is going to write most of it?
- butterandguns 3y ago
  Never done it myself, but I imagine understanding how the components all fit together is more valuable/fun than dealing with the minutiae of every function.
- fzzzy 3y ago
  I don't think the fun part is actually pressing on the keyboard.

mtriassi 3y ago

This feels more or less in line with what my team has found, we gave everyone a copilot seat in our Github org, and anecdotally speaking it feels like we've seen roughly a 5-10% increase in productivity. This is of course self reported and not measured against any metrics. Assuming we're right about that, its an easy sell when we account for what our internal hourly rate is. we also found the same as the OP, It's good for simple problems or boilerplate, not great for more complex problems.

b20000 3y ago
what is the cost of analyzing the proposed solution and fixing it so it does what you want and how does that compare to not using AI and writing the code yourself?
- Smeevy 3y ago
  That's an excellent question. I'm typically able to stay focused on a task in spite of distractions, but working with generated nonsense while coding something new has derailed me quite a few times. The novelty has definitely worn off for me, at least.
jasonjmcghee 3y ago
I use copilot and write a whole lot of code every day. It's very very hard for me to believe anyone could get a 5-10% boost in productivity. It's often incorrect and when it is correct, it's often trivial. It is a value add, but I'd put it closer to 0.5% if that. Over, say, 8 hours of coding time, it might save me a couple of minutes total. Which, from a company expense perspective is still worth it, but an order of magnitude less than your anecdote. It's very hard for me to envision how copilot could save someone that kind of time.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  Interesting, the experience is very different for me. What language are you working with? I find it to be pretty strong in my Python and JS projects.

thunkshift1 3y ago

Is it worth paying 20$ for 5% improvement

fiprisoner 3y ago
Unless your time is borderline worthless, obviously yes.