I think that is the point, YOU are in the driving seat and use copilot to assist. Absolutely agree on the fact that younger software engineers might have, a perhaps, significant impact on the way they will be doing software, and the reason why i think understanding computer science fundamentals along with systems designs and engineering principles and best practices are still a must, so that you can know when copilot is BSing you.
Spot on. The other key insight for me is how to interview engineers moving forward. I think it's important to assess their proficiency with AI tools and how they asses its output. I plan to cover some of that in a future article .
I've been using Windows Copilot instead of (Bing) search for a while, since it can search and then summarize search results much faster than I can, and it makes it easy to ask follow-up questions shorthand, rather than formulating those as new, standalone search queries.
I'm increasingly using GitHub Copilot in VS Code as well now and it amazes me how much better it's gotten in a short space of time. I mostly find it useful as a pair programmer, making suggestions, reviewing my code, bouncing ideas off it, and exploring new tools and libraries. But I am starting to use it to make edits to my code as well now, rather than just as a glorified auto-suggest, and that's also becoming more and more useful.
I think it'll be very interesting to see how our work as software developers evolves over the next few years, as LLMs continue to improve in speed and accuracy.
The way you describe your use is very much as a complimentary tool which I think is very healthy. It's also what I tend to do — using it as a colleague almost.
It's be interesting to see where it goes. I'm curious, have you tried Cursor yet? I'd give it a go.
I'm very comfortable with VS Code and Copilot is well-integrated (including voice direction!). I rely on scripting of VS Code (with ClojureScript) for some of my workflows so I haven't looked at any alternative editors for years at this point.
I think that is the point, YOU are in the driving seat and use copilot to assist. Absolutely agree on the fact that younger software engineers might have, a perhaps, significant impact on the way they will be doing software, and the reason why i think understanding computer science fundamentals along with systems designs and engineering principles and best practices are still a must, so that you can know when copilot is BSing you.
Spot on. The other key insight for me is how to interview engineers moving forward. I think it's important to assess their proficiency with AI tools and how they asses its output. I plan to cover some of that in a future article .
I've been using Windows Copilot instead of (Bing) search for a while, since it can search and then summarize search results much faster than I can, and it makes it easy to ask follow-up questions shorthand, rather than formulating those as new, standalone search queries.
I'm increasingly using GitHub Copilot in VS Code as well now and it amazes me how much better it's gotten in a short space of time. I mostly find it useful as a pair programmer, making suggestions, reviewing my code, bouncing ideas off it, and exploring new tools and libraries. But I am starting to use it to make edits to my code as well now, rather than just as a glorified auto-suggest, and that's also becoming more and more useful.
I think it'll be very interesting to see how our work as software developers evolves over the next few years, as LLMs continue to improve in speed and accuracy.
Thanks for sharing, Sean!
The way you describe your use is very much as a complimentary tool which I think is very healthy. It's also what I tend to do — using it as a colleague almost.
It's be interesting to see where it goes. I'm curious, have you tried Cursor yet? I'd give it a go.
I'm very comfortable with VS Code and Copilot is well-integrated (including voice direction!). I rely on scripting of VS Code (with ClojureScript) for some of my workflows so I haven't looked at any alternative editors for years at this point.