Following my essay about Code Source Management, I talked about a tool that could write real code on behalf of developers: Copilot.
A bit of history
A.I stands for Artificial Intelligence.
For many years, developers have been hosting their code on Github. Millions of lines of code written in Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Python, JavaScript and Ruby were parked on Github. That's BIG DATA.
Do you know what to do with BIG DATA? As the field of A.I. and precisely Machine Learning become popular, some great tools were created with the goal of assisting developers with their tasks: Writing code.
Early on, these tools were not smart at all. They were quite static and would only suggest autocompleting some code developers were writing.
GPT-3 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3
Over time, some new powerful technologies such as GPT-3 were able to write text to the point where It was impossible to differentiate that text from humans.
This was already a scary but exciting step in developers' assistant tools.
Microsoft owns Github and the code that's hosted on their servers.
In July 2019, Microsoft invest 1 billion in OpenAI, the entity in charge of developing GPT-3. There were some strings attached to that offer:
Microsoft Azure became the sole cloud provider of OpenAI. Then, in September 2020, Microsoft bought an exclusive license to directly integrate GPT-3 into its own products.
They initially focused on code generation tools. Think of it this way:
A developer is tasked to write a program that will extract names out of someone's profile on LinkedIn. Instead of writing the code that will achieve this task, the developer will write their task in plain English. Then the AI will generate the requested code.
A little over a year ago, the code written by this tool was rubbish. Their latest version is a game-changer!
What about Copilot?
GitHub Copilot is one of the first products (not commercial yet) Microsoft has released that uses OpenAI Codex instead of GPT-3 to assist developers. It's a game-changer!
It was trained on billions of lines of public code, GitHub Copilot puts the knowledge developers need at their fingertips, saving them time and helping them stay focused.
It draws context from the code the developer is working on, suggesting whole lines or entire functions. It helps them quickly discover alternative ways to solve problems, write tests, and explore new APIs without having to tediously tailor a search for answers on the internet. As they type, it adapts to the way developers write code—to help them complete your work faster. It's magic.
Takeaways
Before you asked your developers to reduce their hourly rate because they use Copilot or ask them to work faster, consider the followings:
This tool is still in beta and still requires some input from developers to be effective
It is not available for every programming language and frameworks
It is proprietary software. Not all developers are using Microsoft's IDEs
I'll cover more about Copilot during my upcoming webinar. You can register here if you're interested.
Wanna chat with a developer? Ask them how they feel about Copilot! Enjoy your discussion.
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