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Simona Winnekes

245 likes

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4.8K reads

15 comments

Adarsh Thakur
Adarsh Thakur
Jul 16, 2021

Now After reading this I am even more excited to try copilot. Thanks for Writing.

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Matt Pignatore
Matt Pignatore
Jul 16, 2021

Thanks for sharing!

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Iva Kop
Iva Kop
Jul 16, 2021

Very interesting experiment, thank you for sharing! I would love to try copilot for myself and see the extent to which it can automate repetitive code patterns in a larger code-base. I'm guessing this is where we'll see the most value.

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·1 reply
Simona Winnekes
Simona Winnekes
Author
·Jul 16, 2021

Indeed!

It is very tedious if it can only used on a file-to-file basis, but it's going to be a completely different game once Copilot is able to take the whole codebase into consideration!

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Matej Bošnjak
Matej Bošnjak
Jul 16, 2021

Looks like I removed my comment by accident.

I tried it as well and I agree that GH Pilot generates a lot of code smell. I was getting a lot of weird code suggestions, even when cycling trhough alternatives which was even worse.

Currently github pilot looks like a tool with a lot of code snipets and most of them are not really good - aka bad/old practices like adding var instead of let or const, spliting code into too much variables etc...

There's no point for me to use it if I'll have to refactor every single snipet I get.

It also tried to offer me code I already have for certain services, which was super weird since I don't need 2 indentical service functions with different names.

For now I will turn it off as it's more of distraction than help. We'll see how it turns out in the near future.

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·2 replies
Simona Winnekes
Simona Winnekes
Author
·Jul 16, 2021

I agree, indeed more distraction than assistance - I could not recommend it to aspiring developers if they are serious about coding.

Copilot would teach them bad habits and might give the impression that the generated code is the right way of coding just because it works in the intended way.

I'll follow the progress of Copilot but will definitely not be using it in my projects!

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prabanjan raja
prabanjan raja
Jul 17, 2021

Simona Winnekes thanks for this amazing article
I was so excited to be a part of the GitHub Copilot's technical preview team but after using it in my projects I absolutely agree with you and now I have it turned off almost most of the time. I just turn it on only when I am in the mood to explore things

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Kot
Kot
Jul 16, 2021

I found TabNine to produce much more useful results than Copilot personally.

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·2 replies
Simona Winnekes
Simona Winnekes
Author
·Jul 16, 2021

I have heard people say that!

Do you recommend Tabnine for daily coding? How helpful is it to you?

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Kot
Kot
Jul 16, 2021

Simona Winnekes Yep! TabNine provides good suggestions for me, and produces less (but not zero) garbage output compared to Copilot. When I tried Copilot, it gave me markdown suggestions (specifically ```) at the end of every file, which was annoying. TabNine is also pretty helpful for completing plaintext/comments in English.

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Dorian C Brown
Dorian C Brown
Jul 16, 2021

Agreed I found it pretty annoying. Tabnine+snippets is all I really need right now. I still interested in seeing how it evolves over time but there are some ethical and privacy considerations for me with how it generated suggestions from open source projects.

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Chandrakanth
Chandrakanth
Jul 17, 2021

Looks interesting! Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I should give it a try.

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Marcus Shamase
Marcus Shamase
Jul 19, 2021

Thanks for sharing.

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Arun Mohan Raj
Arun Mohan Raj
Jul 21, 2021

Very interesting, thank you for sharing!

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Emmanuel Barroga
Emmanuel Barroga
Jul 23, 2021

Interesting read, thanks for the share!

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