[tluyben2]

> If you're concerned that software developers job security is at all at risk from co-pilot than you greatly misunderstand how software engineering works.

I think you are vastly underestimating how many professionally employed software developers are replaceable by copilot at this very moment. The managers are not caught up yet and you seem to be lucky not having to work with this type of dev, but I have had 1000s of people I interacted with in a professional capacity over the decades who can be replaced today. Some of those realised this and moved to different positions (for instance, advising how to use ML to replace them: if you cannot beat them…).

I mean of course you are right in general but there are millions of ‘developers’ who just look everything up with Google/SO, copy paste and change until it works. You are saying this will make their lives better, I say it will terminate their employment.

Anecdote: I know a guy who makes a boatload of money in London programming but has no understanding of things like classes, functional constructs, functions, iterators (he kind of, sometimes, understands loops) etc. He simply copies things and changes them until it works: he moved to frontend (react) as there he is almost not distinguishable from his more capable colleagues because they are all in a ‘put code and see the result’ type of mode anyway and all structures look the same in that framework, so the skeleton function, useXXX etc is all copy paste mostly anyway.

[matwood]

> ‘put code and see the result’

Isn't this basically all UI programming? :D

Joking aside, I see this 'person X doesn't know anything, but they are still delivering' attitude quite a bit on HN now. They clearly know something, and projects like co-pilot will make them even more effective.

I think the opposite of you - that projects like co-pilot will further lower the barriers of entry to programming and expand those who program. I also think that like all ease of programming advances in the past, business requirements will continue to grow at the edges where those who care about the craft will still be required.

[tluyben2]

Oh I do believe you are right, I just don’t think this is a thing just anyone can learn: many ‘outsourcing’ programmers/coders don’t really understand what they are working on; they just finish tasks. I have no stats, but in companies I worked/work with, it is the vast majority. They don’t know or care about the business goals, they just perform tasks and then go home. This is almost already replaceable by copilot.

Like I said; it is a great thing for me but I don’t believe developers without talent and/or rigorous foundations will make it. Go on Upwork and try to find someone who can do more than the same work (mostly copy paste) that they always did. In an interview when you ask someone to use map/reduce to create a map/dict, they will glaze over. This is the norm, not the exception, no matter the pay. Some of them have 10 years experience but cannot do anything else than make crud pages. This will end as copilot makes lovely .reduce and linq art from a human language prompt.

[bamboozled]

Who or what would replace them ? If you got rid of these developers, how would those who did the firing know what they’re doing ?

[tluyben2]

I use copilot to do things that I would’ve hired people for. I create tests and put comments in my code and copilot comes up with pages of dreary boring shit that would take me 0 pleasure or brainpower but would take a lot of work to just go through.

A real good example is mapping objects: let’s say you have a deep nested object from an ERP and you need to map that to another system(s). This is horrible work and copilot just generates almost everything for it if it knows the input and output objects; it ‘knows’ that address = street and if it is not it will deduct it from the models or comments or both; if there is a separate house number and stuff, it’ll generate code to translate that. I used to hire people for that; no longer; it just pops, I run the tests and fix some thing here and there.

[bamboozled]

I have to be honest I've not used it but it truly sounds incredible that it can do things as well as you say.

So you write tests and copilot generates code you shove into production with little overhead ?

Do you read the code thoroughly (kind of negating having it generated for you?), or just have blind faith in it because tests are green and just YOLO it into production ?

I'd feel pretty uneasy deploying code that:

  * I, or a trusted peer has not written.

  * Hasn't been reviewed by my peers.

  * Code I, or my peers don't understand fairly well.

That's not to say I think me or my colleagues write code that doesn't have problems, but I like to think we at least understand the code we work with and I believe this has benefits beyond just getting stuff done quickly and cheaply.

In other words, I have no problem using code generated by co-pilot, but I'd feel the need to read and review it quite thoroughly and then I sort of feel that negates the purpose, and it also means it pulls my back into the role of doing work I'd hire someone else to do.

[tluyben2]

But I do review and test it and it is mostly 80% ok. It even learns your style of coding. Like said; it works best for stuff that is heavy on code but low on thought.

[bamboozled]

Do you enjoy working like this? Having CP generate things correctly 80% of the time and then having to scrutinize whatever is generated and look for problems?

Genuine question, not being snarky.

[thdespou]

So are you going to report him or you are just whining about why life is unfair? What he does in order to do his job is none of your business as you don't know how his life is behind the scenes.

[spockz]

I read the gp comment as an example of the type of engineer that can be replaced by copilot. Nothing more.

[tluyben2]

Indeed; that was the intended message. I don’t go reporting random people who slack off but yet complete their work; that would be a really busy job… I think there is even a word for that now in English (I am dutch). I will try to find it.

[UncleEntity]

Which doesn’t actually seem like a great loss imho…

I will admit I’m kind of a “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” kind of coder but nobody is paying me boatloads of money to poke at some program until it stops segfaulting, would be nice though.

[tluyben2]

Why would I report him? He is doing what he is asked to do?