this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
2231 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
59605 readers
3415 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So I used to think that, but I gave it a try as I’m a software dev. I personally didn’t find it that useful, as in I wouldn’t pay for it.
Usually when I want to get started, I just look up a basic guide and just copy their entire example to get started. You could do that with chatGPT too but what if it gave you wrong answers?
I also asked it more specific questions about how to do X in tool Y. Something I couldn’t quickly google. Well it didn’t give me a correct answer. Mostly because that question was rather niche.
So my conclusion was that, it may help people that don’t know how to google or are learning a very well know tool/language with lots of good docs, but for those who already know how to use the industry tools, it basically was an expensive hint machine.
In all fairness, I’ll probably use it here and there, but I wouldn’t pay for it. Also, note my example was chatGPT specific. I’ve heard some companies might use it to make their docs more searchable which imo might be the first good use case (once it happens lol).
I just recently got copilot in vscode through work. I typed a comment that said, "create a new model in sqlalchemy named assets with the columns, a, b, c, d". It couldn't know the proper data types to use, but it output everything perfectly, including using my custom defined annotations, only it was the same annotation for every column that I then had to update. As a test, that was great, but copilot also picked up a SQL query I had written in a comment to reference as I was making my models, and it also generated that entire model for me as well.
It didn't do anything that I didn't know how to do, but it saved on some typing effort. I use it mostly for its auto complete functionality and letting it suggest comments for me.
That’s awesome, and I would probably would find those tools useful.
Code generators have existed for a long time, but they are usually free. These tools actually costs a lot of money, cost way more to generate code this way than the traditional way.
So idk if it would be worth it once the venture capitalist money dries up.
What are these code generators that have existed for a long time?
Lookup emmet.
I’ve also found IntelliJ’s generators useful for Java.
Neither of those seem similar to GitHub copilot other than that they can reduce keystrokes for some common tasks. The actual applicability of them seems narrow. Frequently I use GitHub copilot for “implement this function based on this doc comment I wrote” or “write docs for this class/function”. It’s the natural language component that makes the LLM approach useful.
There is also auto doc generators.
I think what you’re specifically referring to is accessibility or ease of use. For someone unfamiliar with those tools, I can see the appeal.
Personally, as a software dev, I think it’s just very inefficient way to accomplish this goal. LLMs consume vastly more resources than a simple script. So I wouldn’t use it, especially if I’m paying real money for it.