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> slightly fancy code completion tool Does this alone not increase your productivity exponentially? It does mine. I personally read code faster than I write it

by broast 2y ago

> slightly fancy code completion tool Does this alone not increase your productivity exponentially? It does mine. I personally read code faster than I write it so it is an undeniable boon.

i_love_retros 2y ago
I've found it depends on the context (pardon the pun) For example, personal projects that are small and where copilot has access to all the context it needs to make a suggestion - such as a script or small game - it has been really useful. But in a real world large project for my day job, where it would need access to almost the entire code base to make any kind of useful suggestion that could help me build a feature, it's useless! And I'd argue this is when I need it.
- wenc 2y ago
  At present, LLMs work well with smaller chunks of code at time. Check out these tips for using Aider (a CLI based LLM code assisntant) https://aider.chat/docs/usage/tips.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/tips.html It can ingest the entire codebase (up to its context length), but for some reason, I’ve always had much higher quality chats with smaller bite-sized pieces of code.
jprete 2y ago
Autocomplete distracts me enough that it really needs to be close to 100% correct before it's useful. Otherwise it's just wrecking my flow and slowing me down.
coffeebeqn 2y ago
Exponentially? Absolutely not. In the best case it creates something that’s almost useful. Are you working on large actual codebases or talking about some one off toy apps?
agos 2y ago
it's surely a boon, but does not match the hype
breuleux 2y ago
I spend most of my time thinking about what I'm trying to do and how to best achieve it, so code completion can only make me marginally more productive. If the tool can guess a large chunk of what I've decided to do, sure, that's nice, but at the end of the day it still only adds up to a couple minutes at best.

by broast 2y ago

> slightly fancy code completion tool Does this alone not increase your productivity exponentially? It does mine. I personally read code faster than I write it so it is an undeniable boon.

i_love_retros 2y ago

I've found it depends on the context (pardon the pun) For example, personal projects that are small and where copilot has access to all the context it needs to make a suggestion - such as a script or small game - it has been really useful. But in a real world large project for my day job, where it would need access to almost the entire code base to make any kind of useful suggestion that could help me build a feature, it's useless! And I'd argue this is when I need it.

wenc 2y ago
At present, LLMs work well with smaller chunks of code at time. Check out these tips for using Aider (a CLI based LLM code assisntant) https://aider.chat/docs/usage/tips.html https://aider.chat/docs/usage/tips.html It can ingest the entire codebase (up to its context length), but for some reason, I’ve always had much higher quality chats with smaller bite-sized pieces of code.

jprete 2y ago

Autocomplete distracts me enough that it really needs to be close to 100% correct before it's useful. Otherwise it's just wrecking my flow and slowing me down.

coffeebeqn 2y ago

Exponentially? Absolutely not. In the best case it creates something that’s almost useful. Are you working on large actual codebases or talking about some one off toy apps?

agos 2y ago

it's surely a boon, but does not match the hype

breuleux 2y ago

I spend most of my time thinking about what I'm trying to do and how to best achieve it, so code completion can only make me marginally more productive. If the tool can guess a large chunk of what I've decided to do, sure, that's nice, but at the end of the day it still only adds up to a couple minutes at best.