Re:Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
by onion2k on Friday July 02, 2021 @11:06AM
(#27712460)
Any non trivial app requires an understanding of a much larger part of the codebase than a tool like Copilot is looking at at any one time.
I don't think that's important. Copilot, at least as it's been demo'd so far judging by the examples, is to help you write small, standalone functions. It shouldn't need to know about the rest of the application. Just as the functions that you write yourself shouldn't need to know about the rest of the application either.
If your functions need a broad understanding of the codebase as a whole how the heck do you write tests that don't fail the instant anything changes?
Re:Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
by mimixco on Friday July 02, 2021 @12:09PM
(#27713341)
The reality of code is that stuff breaks when connected to other stuff, as it eventually must be for real work to happen. There's no getting around that.
Since that's where the work of programming is, debugging connected applications (not writing fresh, unencumbered code, a rare luxury), a tool that offers no help for that is, well, not much help.
Copilot does not understand the code in toto and is therefore really useless for debugging (70% of all coding) and probably useless for anything other than very simple parts of an app.