My employer is asking me to try out Copilot to see if it offers a lot of value. IMO about 90% of the time it is an annoying interruption that offers to help me write a few characters (which I could probably write faster if I wasn't being interrupted) or maybe a few lines at most. 5% of the time it offers downright incorrect suggestions, and about half of those suggestions are only subtly incorrect, so I have to be on-guard about anything I use it for. 5% of the time it offers suggestions that I didn't consider, but are definitely a positive contribution. E.g. checking input parameter validity.
I've heard that one way to use it effectively is writing a detailed comment about what you want to do, then let it suggest the code. I personally don't like those style of comments, so I'd have to:
- enable copilot if I have it disabled (I have a keymap for this in vim)
- write the comment
- carefully review that the suggestion is correct and complete
- accept the suggestion, then go back up to delete the comment
kinda inconvenient, but if I was blanking on a bunch of stdlib functions maybe it would help? But accepting the copilot suggestions doesn't add imports, whereas accepting language server suggestions often does (e.g. with gopls).
Some examples of wrong suggestions... things like suggesting OpenIDConnectClientCredentialsFlow when the actual name of the class is just OpenIDConnectClientCredentials. Language servers will have the correct suggestion, and Copilot is just a bother and a hindrance in that case.
> I've heard that one way to use it effectively is writing a detailed comment about what you want to do, then let it suggest the code. I personally don't like those style of comments
I do the same as you: write such comments, let Copilot draft the code, then I delete the comment.
Since the comment is detailed, I think of such use of Copilot as a “pseudocode to code compiler”.
Wdym, the whole comment or just that statement? If you meant the statement, then yeah. I was just offering the context for my usage of copilot. Essentially a solution in search of an unstated problem.
famously in San Diego IIR, a large corporation of some kind announced outsourcing and layoffs.. then proceeded to require the employees to train the new outsourced people for more than a month! dimly recalled from business news after the 2008 meltdown
I've heard that one way to use it effectively is writing a detailed comment about what you want to do, then let it suggest the code. I personally don't like those style of comments, so I'd have to:
- enable copilot if I have it disabled (I have a keymap for this in vim)
- write the comment
- carefully review that the suggestion is correct and complete
- accept the suggestion, then go back up to delete the comment
kinda inconvenient, but if I was blanking on a bunch of stdlib functions maybe it would help? But accepting the copilot suggestions doesn't add imports, whereas accepting language server suggestions often does (e.g. with gopls).