GitHub Makes Copilot Chat Generally Available, Letting Devs Ask Questions About Code 16
After launching a limited beta test in July and a beta version for individual developers in September, GitHub's Copilot Chat chatbot feature is now generally available for all users. TechCrunch reports: As of today, Copilot Chat is available in the sidebar in Microsoft's IDEs, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio -- included as a part of GitHub Copilot paid tiers and free for verified teachers, students and maintainers of certain open source projects. Little else about Copilot Chat has changed since the beta. The chatbot's still powered by GPT-4, OpenAI's flagship generative AI model, fine-tuned specifically for dev scenarios. Developers can prompt Copilot Chat in natural language to get real-time guidance, for example asking Copilot Chat to explain concepts, detect vulnerabilities or write unit tests.
Re:And for people not part of MS Borg? (Score:4)
I suppose it depends what you mean by "not part of MS Borg."
Visual Studio Code (and GitHub Copilot) runs on Linux and Mac OS, so you can use it even if you're not running Windows.
You can use it for programming in non-Microsoft programming languages like Python, C++, and Java.
You can use it without using GitHub (which is owned by Microsoft).
GitHub Copilot is itself a Microsoft product, and it runs within Visual Studio Code, so if you want to use it, you can't get away from that connection to MS. But in just about every other way, yes.
Re: (Score:1)
Thanks for the information.
Now I have learned something new today.
Re: And for people not part of MS Borg? (Score:2)
There's a plugin to make it work in IntelliJ (which incidenally since the latest version also comes bundled with Jetbrains' own GPT4-based code assist tools). Chat obviously hasn't been available as of this past Friday, we'll have a look when we get back to work on Tuesday.
It's true that sometimes a workplace restricts one to certain IDEs and AI tools, especially when they worry about IP being uploaded to the tool provider.
As other commenters in this post have mentioned, Copilot is not ready to replace hu
Tell the nice chatbot how to replace you! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I've been using GitHub Copilot for several weeks now. While I find its suggestions helpful, I have yet to find one (that was non-trivial) that I didn't have to adjust manually, or completely rewrite. It's nowhere near being able to do the work of a *real* programmer.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I would post as AC if I said stupid stuff like that too.
Copilot is immensely helpful, it's just far from being able to replace a person.
Re:Tell the nice chatbot how to replace you! (Score:4, Interesting)
Copilot (Suggestions) is a different critter from Copilot chat. I've been using it for a while, and it's impressed me.
It has caught some seriously wiggy bugs for me with questions like 'This function is returning null about one time in a hundred and I don't understand why.'
Re: (Score:2)
I've had mixed results with both tools.
For example, using the original tool (GitHub Copilot), sometimes when I type instructions in SQL, it works fine. For example, "--Write a query that gets all rows where the XML field ElementXML has a value at /INDI/NAME"...sometimes this produces a nice query that includes the correct syntax to query the XML field by its XPATH value. That's not a straightforward thing in SQL. But sometimes it just tries to embellish my comment, by adding more English text to what I was
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, same. You have to be very mindful of the information it presents to you because you have no idea what is was trained with or when. As an example, I am working on some AWS project and Copilot tends to be out of date with a lot of its general knowledge of AWS systems. If I give it the updated documentation it will give you updated answers. But out of the box, it may need some assembly.
Think of the programming grandchildren (Score:3)
Today's chatbot learns from programming sites, today's programmers get advice from chatbot, programming sites die off, tomorrow's programmers get what from where?
Re: (Score:3)
From the 'chatbot'. Do you really think 'learns from programming sites' is the end game for AI?
How do humans synthesize new knowledge? Well, so will AI.
Re: (Score:2)
I am an old fogey who remembers what the "end game" was before AI got redefined as whatever big tech is trying to sell at the moment. We're not there yet, and my comment is about one of the problems with LLMs.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you asked "tomorrow's programmers get what from where?", with 'tomorrow' clearly intended to mean 'the (somewhat near) future'. That includes everything that might reasonably exist in said future.
You gotta think out of your box, man. The current LLMs are not perfect, but the amount of resources being invested into further development of ANNs by both the private and public sector is insane (it's already at least 10% of R&D spending, worldwide). An entire legion of jaded "I walked through the snow in