The study tracked around 800 developers, comparing their output with and without GitHub's Copilot coding assistant over three-month periods. Surprisingly, when measuring key metrics like pull request...

The study tracked around 800 developers, comparing their output with and without GitHub’s Copilot coding assistant over three-month periods. Surprisingly, when measuring key metrics like pull request cycle time and throughput, Uplevel found no meaningful improvements for those using Copilot.

  • @rushactionEnglish
    6•4 hours ago

    It’s a glorified autocorrect. Using it for anything else and expecting magic is an interesting idea. I’m not sure what folks are expecting there.

    • It suggests variables and function names I was already going to type more accurately. Better, it suggests ones even when I cannot remember the name because i got stumped trying to remember.
    • It fills in basic control structures and functions more effectively than the IDE’s completion templates.
    • It provides a decent starting point for both comments and documentation (the hard part). Meaning my code actually has comments and documentation. Regularly!

    But I don’t ask it to explain things or generate algorithms willy nilly. I don’t expect or try to have it do something that’s not more than simply auto-completion.

    I honestly like it, even if I strongly dislike the use of AI elsewhere. It’s working in this area for me.