[isaacremuant]

I'm not saying it's wrong but usually thinking is the most important part for programming and relevant to long term success.

Typing is pretty easy and not the bottleneck of software development. That's why readable variables are better than abbreviations.

Judicious use of abstractions helps with that as well.

I think where things like copilot might shine is being a JIT educator of coding practices but they should be part of your thinking process and not replace it.

The risk with over relying on crutches is substituting the knowledge and intentionality of development.

There's a balance, and one that needs to be sought.

I'm not sceptical about the power, but I am about the claims of people who want to cash in or simply say "it's awesome" and allow no discussion. That means that you get to detail projects trying to use GPT models as some sort of authority that doesnt need to justify why it's better than some alternative. If you argue against it you're "not seeing the opportunity".

It's not a new battle, fighting hype and separating the actual capabilities of a tech and the lies or misconceptions. It's hard to get people to see short Vs long term.

[padjo]

Curious, have you tried Co-pilot? The type of thinking and typing it saves me from are not trivial. It turns writing the remainder of a method into just pressing tab. Or completely writes test cases based on the case name. Or just suggests test cases entirely.

The other day I let it autocomplete methods in a public interface and it was literally ideating feature ideas for me.

Sure there’s overblown hype but there is also real value here.

[isaacremuant]

If you're talking about Microsoft's ML powered suggestions/autocomplete tool, I haven't.

I'll try it for the sake of this conversation but I think it still doesn't change my point about being intentional and thinking.

I'd like to see examples of those tests. After many years of software development and seeing how many people produce buggy services that create a lot of maintenance burden or simply solve the wrong problem, I firmly believe writing is a minuscule part of the day and it's mostly about thinking enough and communicating well with the human interfaces of your project.

Writing is easy. You can get fast with touch typing or autocomplete features (including the copilot one) but that's not the most important thing.

Knowing why you do something and being able to analyze that decision after a period of time and evaluate how "right" it was, is not something that can be done for you.

For quick brainstorming it can be great but we should be careful with the authority we assign it to, when we can't really explain its thought process