[MarquesMa]

Thank you, GitHub, this is one of the best things!

No, it cannot make me write code I couldn't write before. It does not autopilot and does all the coding by itself. But it still boosts my productivity greatly, making me relaxed while coding and focusing on the important part rather than errands.

[w4ffl35]

I've been using it for a while now. When I forget some syntax occasionally I'll switch this on instead of searching documentation or google, but more often than not my IDE can get me unstuck with less overhead.

Also if there are some repetitive sections of code I need to bang out quickly this will auto fill that repetitive pattern (although I'd argue this is usually a sign that the code should be cleaned up)

I avoid letting it fill in large swaths of code though. I have no idea where that code is coming from (license infringement?) and it tends to go way off the rails.

Additionally I feel that it makes me a worse programmer if I allow it to take over too much.

I've been programming for 20 years (more if you count my time as a kid) and have a certain flow. Part of that flow is the natural pause between thinking of solutions and typing. When the computer is beating me to the typing portion (and often times making mistakes) I would find myself doing more code review than code writing. Sometimes a few bugs popped up and it was thanks to copilot (or was it me failing to correct copilot's mistakes?).

I found my brain sort of switching into a different mode. Rather than thinking about my next steps I was thinking about the steps the computer just took and how I needed to clean them up.

Rather than the AI being my reviewer during a paired programming session, I was the computer's reviewer.

So now, like I said I use it very sparingly.

[w4ffl35]

Additionally: when I allowed copilot to do heavier coding for me, I found myself returning later and feeling somewhat unfamiliar with the code. That's really bad for maintenance, project pace, etc. I don't want to try to re-learn, fix, remember and maintain code that someone else (a computer in this case) wrote. Its hard enough doing so reliably in group code settings (work), now injecting that into my daily coding life feels like a solution I didn't ask for.

I will say that I'm not averse to change and do appreciate the new tools that we have available to us - Starting on a x386 writing QBASIC as a kid to using Jetbrains Rider is an indescribably different experience.

That said, I'm not ready to move to the backseat and let the computer take over yet. In small doses copilot is fine, but I wouldn't lean heavily on it for large projects or to do the thinking for me.