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These are the cases where even senior developers should use AIs. When I'm creating a CRUD API I know exactly what I want, I know exactly how it should look lik

These are the cases where even senior developers should use AIs. When I'm creating a CRUD API I know exactly what I want, I know exactly how it should look like. Do I want to spend 15-30 minutes typing furiously adding the endpoints? No. I can just tell Copilot to do it and check its work. I'll be done in 5 minutes doing something more engaging like adding the actual business logic.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Lately I have been using it to write print and logger statements. I type what I want as a sentence in a comment and then it handles all the special syntax characters. Given the error rate I’m not certain it saves time, but it is fun to play with.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I've got "just" Amazon Q at home (not paying Copilot prices for my personal projects) and just typing "log.Printf(" and waiting a second it usually gets what I'm trying to log either very close or exactly right. It's not like we're breaking new ground in the field of computer science here. The LLMs have been taught with terabytes of code and me writing a Go API glue program is perfectly in their wheelhouse.
widgeyboy 3y ago
I agree with this mostly - but recently a bug was introduced into our app because of a copilot suggestion that wasn't checked thoroughly enough by the engineer (it suggested a property that was similarly named to another property but not the same). Like you say, it makes the most sense repetitive or easy tasks.
- everforward 3y ago
  My usage of Copilot is dramatically higher in strictly typed languages because of things like this. It's almost counter-productive if I have to very carefully analyze every variable name to make sure it's not subtly wrong. Having a compiler do that validation of AI output helps dramatically so I only have to validate logic and not every freaking character in the function.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  This is why I have Copilot write unit tests too :D Actually it does the boring bit of generating the test data and the basic cases, I'll do a once over and add more if it's a something that warrants it.
pdimitar 3y ago
> I can just tell Copilot to do it and check its work Checking other entities' code is not trivial and very error-prone. I get what you're saying but I have my doubts if me doing the whole work manually would be slower than asking an assistant + doing an extensive code review.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  This is highly repetitive code where the options are pretty much either me copy-pasting a piece of code and changing a bit here and there or having an AI do it. The latter won't make stupid small mistakes, I will (and have) And I'm checking like 10 lines at a time, related to code in the context I've got in my head. I need to review 100x bigger PRs done by humans of varying skill regularly - related to other parts of the project I'm not intimately familiar.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Okay, but isn't your own code generator a better option in this case? You know, a for loop with some parameters that spits out code?
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      How can a "for loop" generate me 10 API endpoints in C# that call business logic functions with the parameters received?
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        You tell me. You are the one who said that code was repetitive to generate. :) So it turns out, not so repetitive after all then? I remember devising my own mini DSL when I had to produce 250+ such endpoints and validators. Three days spent on that, then ran the command and I had working code 30 seconds later. Felt like a god.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

Lately I have been using it to write print and logger statements. I type what I want as a sentence in a comment and then it handles all the special syntax characters. Given the error rate I’m not certain it saves time, but it is fun to play with.

theshrike79 3y ago
I've got "just" Amazon Q at home (not paying Copilot prices for my personal projects) and just typing "log.Printf(" and waiting a second it usually gets what I'm trying to log either very close or exactly right. It's not like we're breaking new ground in the field of computer science here. The LLMs have been taught with terabytes of code and me writing a Go API glue program is perfectly in their wheelhouse.

widgeyboy 3y ago

I agree with this mostly - but recently a bug was introduced into our app because of a copilot suggestion that wasn't checked thoroughly enough by the engineer (it suggested a property that was similarly named to another property but not the same). Like you say, it makes the most sense repetitive or easy tasks.

everforward 3y ago
My usage of Copilot is dramatically higher in strictly typed languages because of things like this. It's almost counter-productive if I have to very carefully analyze every variable name to make sure it's not subtly wrong. Having a compiler do that validation of AI output helps dramatically so I only have to validate logic and not every freaking character in the function.
theshrike79 3y ago
This is why I have Copilot write unit tests too :D Actually it does the boring bit of generating the test data and the basic cases, I'll do a once over and add more if it's a something that warrants it.

pdimitar 3y ago

> I can just tell Copilot to do it and check its work Checking other entities' code is not trivial and very error-prone. I get what you're saying but I have my doubts if me doing the whole work manually would be slower than asking an assistant + doing an extensive code review.

theshrike79 3y ago
This is highly repetitive code where the options are pretty much either me copy-pasting a piece of code and changing a bit here and there or having an AI do it. The latter won't make stupid small mistakes, I will (and have) And I'm checking like 10 lines at a time, related to code in the context I've got in my head. I need to review 100x bigger PRs done by humans of varying skill regularly - related to other parts of the project I'm not intimately familiar.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Okay, but isn't your own code generator a better option in this case? You know, a for loop with some parameters that spits out code?
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    How can a "for loop" generate me 10 API endpoints in C# that call business logic functions with the parameters received?
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      You tell me. You are the one who said that code was repetitive to generate. :) So it turns out, not so repetitive after all then? I remember devising my own mini DSL when I had to produce 250+ such endpoints and validators. Three days spent on that, then ran the command and I had working code 30 seconds later. Felt like a god.