3 ms·

I have yet to see an example of Copilot do something that doesn't seem like basic autocomplete/snippets that editors and IDEs have been doing for decades or cod

I have yet to see an example of Copilot do something that doesn't seem like basic autocomplete/snippets that editors and IDEs have been doing for decades or code so basic that it betrays the lack of competence by the user.

mewpmewp2 3y ago
The auto complete is much more effective than what IDE has... Even if you type at 140wpm it is effective.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Do you not find the latency disruptive? I find that the auto complete results taking even a second and a half breaks my flow, so I disabled Copilot and I don't miss it
  - mewpmewp2 3y ago
    There are some UX concerns I wish could be improved, but I think I have been able to fit decently with the rhythm of it and know when it is efficient to use for me. I can't write multiple lines in a second. In some cases it will give me the exact 10 lines of code I wanted to write myself with few seconds. That is significant. It should be better at auto importing and status indication I think. Also it never makes typoes or rarely index+1 errors, things like that. It is much less mental fatigue compared to if I have to make sure I did those things correctly myself. I think the delay I kind of in my head use like a guessing game of what it will exactly give me or I will plan other things ahead. Because it is also always interesting to see how accurate my guess for what it will give me is. Guess it is kind of fun.
rockemsockem 3y ago
I find the Copilot completions to be slightly better than IDE auto complete, but the latency is too high for it to be useful IMO. It's to big a break in concentration to wait for it to type almost what you were about to. IMO chat-based question-asking when encountering unfamiliar language constructs or framework idioms is where LLMs shine in coding assistance.
- packetlost 3y ago
  > I find the Copilot completions to be slightly better than IDE auto complete, but the latency is too high for it to be useful IMO. It's to big a break in concentration to wait for it to type almost what you were about to. This matches my experience perfectly. It gets decent/usable results like 40% of the time, but latency kills it. > IMO chat-based question-asking when encountering unfamiliar language constructs or framework idioms is where LLMs shine in coding assistance. I have never found this to be productive. It gets details wrong frequently enough that I can't trust the output which effectively doubles (or more) the cognitive effort because you have to validate that it's correct against a more reliable source, or find out the hard way that it's wrong when code/systems break.
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    Interesting, what systems are you asking questions to? I find GPT-4 is pretty much always correct about simple questions I ask. I just avoid using it for anything really deep and refer to documentation instead.
    - packetlost 3y ago
      I've mostly used GPT-4 and Gemini Pro. For simple stuff, it can be correct, but it highly depends on the topic. I've found it very effective as a dictionary or thesaurus but for technical questions, even simple ones like small help with a Scheme macro, it's near useless. I imagine if I was asking it about, say, Python/Django APIs or basic HTML/webdev stuff, it would do better.
      - rockemsockem 3y ago
        When you say technical questions do you mean writing code, explaining code, or something else? If it's writing code I agree, I don't often ask it to explain code unless I want to know about some obscure syntax, but it works pretty well for that. I would not trust it to explain complex logic in a function.

mewpmewp2 3y ago

The auto complete is much more effective than what IDE has... Even if you type at 140wpm it is effective.

rockemsockem 3y ago
Do you not find the latency disruptive? I find that the auto complete results taking even a second and a half breaks my flow, so I disabled Copilot and I don't miss it
- mewpmewp2 3y ago
  There are some UX concerns I wish could be improved, but I think I have been able to fit decently with the rhythm of it and know when it is efficient to use for me. I can't write multiple lines in a second. In some cases it will give me the exact 10 lines of code I wanted to write myself with few seconds. That is significant. It should be better at auto importing and status indication I think. Also it never makes typoes or rarely index+1 errors, things like that. It is much less mental fatigue compared to if I have to make sure I did those things correctly myself. I think the delay I kind of in my head use like a guessing game of what it will exactly give me or I will plan other things ahead. Because it is also always interesting to see how accurate my guess for what it will give me is. Guess it is kind of fun.

rockemsockem 3y ago

I find the Copilot completions to be slightly better than IDE auto complete, but the latency is too high for it to be useful IMO. It's to big a break in concentration to wait for it to type almost what you were about to. IMO chat-based question-asking when encountering unfamiliar language constructs or framework idioms is where LLMs shine in coding assistance.

packetlost 3y ago
> I find the Copilot completions to be slightly better than IDE auto complete, but the latency is too high for it to be useful IMO. It's to big a break in concentration to wait for it to type almost what you were about to. This matches my experience perfectly. It gets decent/usable results like 40% of the time, but latency kills it. > IMO chat-based question-asking when encountering unfamiliar language constructs or framework idioms is where LLMs shine in coding assistance. I have never found this to be productive. It gets details wrong frequently enough that I can't trust the output which effectively doubles (or more) the cognitive effort because you have to validate that it's correct against a more reliable source, or find out the hard way that it's wrong when code/systems break.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Interesting, what systems are you asking questions to? I find GPT-4 is pretty much always correct about simple questions I ask. I just avoid using it for anything really deep and refer to documentation instead.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    I've mostly used GPT-4 and Gemini Pro. For simple stuff, it can be correct, but it highly depends on the topic. I've found it very effective as a dictionary or thesaurus but for technical questions, even simple ones like small help with a Scheme macro, it's near useless. I imagine if I was asking it about, say, Python/Django APIs or basic HTML/webdev stuff, it would do better.
    - rockemsockem 3y ago
      When you say technical questions do you mean writing code, explaining code, or something else? If it's writing code I agree, I don't often ask it to explain code unless I want to know about some obscure syntax, but it works pretty well for that. I would not trust it to explain complex logic in a function.