AI & Coding
I Tested GitHub Copilot Chat —Here Are My Thoughts About It
Microsoft is particularly well-positioned to bring AI to the coders. Firstly, they made a well-timed acquisition of GitHub in 2018, which is essentially the Mecca of open-source code today. The data stored on GitHub functions as a training ground for AI models. Secondly, they've partnered up with OpenAI, the company that has created the large language models that have brought about the new “AI revolution” we see today. Finally, they’ve also immersed themselves in their Visual Studio versions, notably Visual Studio Code, which these days it seems like everyone is using, creating a perfect arena to bring actionable aid to programmers.
GitHub Copilot has been out for quite a while; it was released long before ChatGPT. I started using it a few months ago and I like it. It helps you by providing code completions at your cursor, like an IDE would, but with more sophisticated suggestions, such as completing entire functions. While I do enjoy it, I still feel like the difference in productivity is modest. That being said, for a programmer, any performance boost is often worth it in the long run.
Sometimes it makes mistakes though. I remember vividly the time when I had used GitHub Copilot for a bit but afterward noticed that the program wasn’t acting as expected. Something was…
