• flashgnash@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    Absolutely, I think the people who say it’s completely useless for code are in denial

    Definitely not replacing anyone but my god it has sped up development by generating code I already know how to write 90% of

    No more having to look up “what was the for loop syntax in this language again?”

    • Ethan@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      11 hours ago

      I won’t say copilot is completely useless for code. I will say that it’s near useless for me. The kind of code that it’s good at writing is the kind of code that I can write in my sleep. When I write a for-loop to iterate over an array and print it out (for example), it takes near zero brain power. I’m on autopilot, like driving to work. On the other hand, when I was trialing copilot I’d have to check each suggestion it made to verify that it wasn’t giving me garbage. Verifying copilot’s suggestions takes a lot more brain power than just writing it myself. And the difference in time is minimal. It doesn’t take me much longer to write it myself than it does to validate copilot’s work.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        You can think bigger than that, as an example from the other day, I got it to a Display implementation for all of my error types in rust, it generated nice user friendly error messages based on context and wrote all the boilerplate around displaying them

        Also got it to generate a function that generated a unique RGB colour from a user ID, did it first try and I could use it straight away

        Both those things would’ve taken me maybe 15 minutes by hand but I can generate and proofread them in seconds

        That said, I don’t use copilot I use chatgpt, it’s intentional when I use it not just being shoved in my face all the time which might help my opinion of it

    • xavier666@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      12 hours ago

      “Copilot is really good at things which I already know” and that is perfectly fine

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 day ago

        Exactly.

        It’s to speed up boilerplate and save you having to look up function names or language specific syntax for that one feature you want to use, not to entirely do your job for you

        • Ethan@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 hours ago

          If I’ve been working in the same language for at least a year or two, I don’t have to look up any of that. Copilot might be actually helpful if I’m working in a language I’m not used to, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to look up syntax or functions (excluding 3rd party packages) for the language I work in.

          • flashgnash@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 hours ago

            Of course but presumably on occasion you do work in other languages? I work in all kinds of languages and so jumping between them it’s pretty handy to bridge the gap

            I think you could definitely still get value out of generating simple stuff though, at least for me it really helps get projects done quickly without burning myself out

            For small one off scripts it makes them actually save more time than they take to write (for example colleague had to write the permissions of a bunch of files recursively into an excel doc, chatgpt did 90% of that I did 9 and he did 1 lol)