• kescusay@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Copilot isn’t actually bad for developers, it’s just that you need to be careful with it and recognize its limitations.

    Writing a bunch of REST endpoints for an API and need to implement all the typical http verbs, and you already have all the matching methods for reading, updating, and deleting values in a complex SQL database for each endpoint to call? Copilot can turn a ten minute chore into a ten second one. Very handy.

    Writing those complex SQL methods in the first place? Yeah… Copilot will probably make a ton of mistakes and its work will need to be triple-checked. You’ll save time just doing it yourself if you know how. (And if you don’t, you have no business calling yourself a developer.)

    Copilot is best for easy boilerplate and repetitive code. Problems arise as soon as you ask it to get “creative.”

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yeah, I figured that out eventually, but also figure the same probably applies to the other Copilot. Same underlying technology.

        Wish Microsoft would use different names for different implementations.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      7 months ago

      Copilot isn’t actually bad for developers, it’s just that you need to be careful with it and recognize its limitations.

      Is it me or is this a weird statement for what’s supposed to be an exact science?

      Imagine working in construction and using a level and you’re told “it’s not that it’s a bad level, you just gotta be careful with it”.

      How much margin for error should we allow for getting our code right? Is it now acceptable if we only get 80% right?

      • kescusay@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        It’s more like you get some kind of weird construction multitool that promises to be a level, a drill, a hammer, and a dozen other things, and it turns out to be a really good, innovative, and helpful level… and a really bad everything else.