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I believe the mistake people use with copilot is that they attempt to write large projects or functions when they lack the knowledge base of the underlying tech
by _fs 3y ago
I believe the mistake people use with copilot is that they attempt to write large projects or functions when they lack the knowledge base of the underlying technology.
I prefer to use it as more of an autocomplete on a line per line basis when writing new code.
Typically, I use it for small and concise chunks of code that I already fully understand, but save me time. Things like "Here's 30 lines of text, give me a regex that will match them all" or "Unroll/rewrite this loop utilizing bit shifting".
I also use copilot as a teacher. Like to quickly grok assembly code or code in languages that I do not use everyday. Or having a back and forth conversation with copilot chat on a specific technology I want to use and don't fully understand. Copilot chat makes an excellent rubber duck when working through issues.
- ratg13 3y agoHe’s not using copilot though, and I think that is part of the problem. Copilot gives me what I need to scaffold everything I am building. Asking ChatGPT questions is good for kicking around ideas, but little more.
- CPLX 3y agoHaving a conversation with it is kind of amazing, perhaps underrated. A very long series of questions can totally brief you on tech you don’t understand or have a base in.
- suddenclarity 3y agoUnfortunately the hallucinations make it problematic. Yesterday I was working in a chart library I had never used and Copilot was adamant in convincing me to use non-existing methods. You can question it, but when it's backtracking you have no idea if you triggered it or if the information was wrong. At least with practical implementations you can still verify the output through tests or trial and error but it becomes even more fragile when asking about facts or knowledge.
- CPLX 3y agoI'm talking about something a little different. When you get into the level of method names and so on then yes you're definitely right. But I have had incredibly useful conversations on broad strokes stuff. A question like "what are some of the various options for scoring the similarity between news stories for the purpose of showing similar content to a user" or something can be really really useful, much more so than trying to find that perfect blog post about it, because you can ask follow up questions and sort of evaluate the various key words and concepts you'll want to eventually learn. Stuff like that.
- hmcq6 3y ago> I'm talking about something a little different. Hallucinations are still a problem. The AI doesn't actually know "what options are useful for scoring ...", it's just regurgitating what someone else told it and when you ask it follow up questions it's unable to reason. AI's main feature is the first thing we disqualify people for in interviews. It's knowledge is pure buzzwords and hype. Example: I just asked chatGPT to tell me why framework X is better than framework Y. I am familiar with both frameworks. After the list chatGPT gives a disclaimer that starts with "However, it's essential to note that Y also has its own strengths". It then proceeds to list a few features that both frameworks share, a few features that are subjectively better and a few features that are actually bugs/code smell. That's not the AI's comparison of the two frameworks, that is just someones blog post that has been regurgitated to me in a way that gets around copyright.
- kromem 3y agoIt's pretty amazing how much of the boring parts of programming can be abstracted away with intelligent temporary comments and enough neighboring context using Copilot. Maybe they need to do a better job at teaching users how to be productive with the tool.