Ask HN: GitHub Copilot in VSCode. Does it help?
3 comments
I suspect that it depends on the dev. Where I work, most of the devs have tried this (and other similar) systems, but have largely stopped using them because on the whole they didn't improve productivity or code quality.
The quality is not great nor terrible, but with a new and huge code base it helps find a starting point to work on it and to understand what's going on.
And I have mixed feelings.
In general it helps me to write obvious, boiler-plate code and it shows examples (often useful) of parameters (names, default values) without looking into the documentation. This really speeds up things.
On the downside, it makes many mistakes, proposing correct values, mixed with made up ones, or once referring to a proper parameter, simply to change its name in another block of code.
Another pain point is that it responds slowly. I mean like 1 second later than is the comfort waiting time. So when I already thought it won't respond and press 'backspace' (or 'enter') to move on, it shows the answer and it is immediately destroyed by me.
Do you have any tips & tricks how to make it's usage more effective?
Both, in terms of quality of responses (like to increase awareness of the context) and the overall usability (faster responses by tweaking some parameters, or maybe having triggered requests only - always with manual call for help)?
Personally, I find this tool very useful, but amount of time spend on correcting those "mistakes" is rather high.