AI and Coding - Is Github Co-Pilot Worth It?

To, Yan.

So There's some questions about whether it's ethical or not because unreal, amazing, I love it, or on the flip side, people say, where I'm trying to think something through. And as I'm thinking something through, Thanks so much for tuning in.

No way. You should you should be self aware, Facebook, enough to know that people don't trust you already.

Mhmm. You know, what is that? Is that the It's gonna be reliable. For us? You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Alright. Thanks it. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you on Wednesday.

but Tab 9, Kite are very, very good. And then recently, we heard that Amazon announced one called Code Whisper. It's a good name. Which yeah. It's machine learning,

autocompletions.

which is a pretty popular one. I've had that on as well. It is really good. So

big players come into this spot,

there's that. There's there's certain companies like if you make variables named a certain way? It will learn those types of things and I think it's Absolutely worth it. I'm gonna pay for it myself.

Accelerate application development with automatic code recommendations based literally me, I don't really care that much, but for a lot of people, that's why they will use an alternative

Yeah. But I don't think that GitHub Copilot will be the one forever. It's very interesting to see

That you can install and it will analyze your specific code base, So to that, it doesn't actually send your code to the cloud.

Head on over to s syntax.fm

which is really nice because if you But to to that, I say don't quit coding now because it's Probably what will happen is that this to this type of thing.

over over the times. I'm very curious to see for learning.

Facebook came out with, like, a camera based tablet that, like, you put it That, like, follows you around the house. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's, like, absolutely not. No way.

And don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show.

for a full archive of all of our shows.

with a lot of these, they will have like a pro version I don't necessarily think it makes me dumber. No. I think if you're not okay signing Sending your name to that code. And if someone were to come up and say, why did you do it this way?

Build applications faster

write code that is similar to the way that your team writes it.

Yeah. I I just tried Amazon Code Whisperer, and I I I started typing, and it said, use s three bucket.

I was a big fan of that one. I can't tell you. I think GitHub Copilot is by far the best one,

on the code in your comments in the IDE.

And I think that we'll probably see a couple more and we'll see how they get better and better scaffolds it out. So to me, it is worth it. It makes me move a lot faster.

maybe I'll I'll throw this on.

There's tab 9, CS. I almost wish that it would, like, bill it based on, like, how much you use it. I don't even know. But Peace. Peace.

Please use this Amazon service

Are you do loops a certain way or Are like rocket boosters, meaning that they are going to help us perform at a much higher level, All kinds of stuff like that. It's not ethical. It's not secure.

It's obviously early days, and we might be wrong about this. So tweet us at Syntax FM, and we'd love to hear your opinions on it. Yeah. Likewise.

Last 1 we have here is does it get in the way? A lot of people say, oh, it's annoying. You know? Like, just let me focus on the code.

So the next question we have here is, does it make you dumb? This is another thing we hear from a lot of people.

it in what you are doing. Yeah. It is an efficiency thing, and you do have to know that the code that it's completing is correct beyond just, like, testing and seeing if it working if it works, it. Because you you sometimes sometimes it gives you really off the wall solutions,

Although,

I'll pay 8¢ for this completion. Sure. Whatever.

Absolutely not. Like, I I still know how to write this stuff by hand. I'm not gonna forget how to do it because I've I have learned it. I don't think that this is a good tool

This completion?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. It's this completion costs a fraction of a cent. Yes.

nicer code than I would write myself.

kind of a a better solution than whatever I was planning on writing anyway. So

Yeah. It's you you can't do that. You gotta be able to put your name to the code that you Yeah. Same with, what What are some other companies that just people like, if Facebook came out with a code Oh, yeah. Which is hilarious because React is from it. I'd be like, absolutely. Zuckerberg, no way. Yeah. I don't know if I got anywhere near my code.

eventually accept.

And I say, oh, this is actually, I think I I have a hard time with it.

Yeah. Octocad.

because it thinks you're doing something that you're not. So you really have to Understand the code that it's giving you, but sometimes it gives me Yeah, right. Oh, you're right. So

I could see it being helpful for giving you completions when you're, like, trying to figure something out,

If you say, I didn't, the little Martian did it or the octopus thing.

Some big company, Microsoft, Bill Gates, and all his vaccines,

It. So I think of which is this is mostly in jest, because I get it. If you have a read it themselves.

to be able to read all of my code and use that because they're just going to use that To create a competitor.

So the next one I have here is, is it secure? As a lot of people say, there's absolutely no way I'm going to let

Yeah.

to GitHub

I I don't know. I don't I'm not I'm not the type of person that is,

And for Oh, that's nice. Did you really say that? Boss is I was like, oh, that that's not nothing.

Because they don't feel that way about security.

It says it doesn't.

As a third party, you're trusting them with your code. You're trusting that they're going to keep it safe. You're trusting that they're not going to

As long as they're not

copying and pasting my project.

But for the most part, I would say 90% of the time, I'm enamored with it. And I'm I'm was that the skunk from the Looney Tunes, and I got Hard eyes, and I'm looking at it all. Oh, yeah.

and all kinds of stuff is So

absolutely enamored with it or I would like it to leave.

Your code, it will suggest to you You're gonna wanna check it out for your next project, sanity.i0forward/syntax.

it is both for accuracy So that is something that people are a little bit sore about, which is totally understandable as well.

the I have 2 modes with Copilot.

And then we'll get into all the questions that everyone seems to ask as a follow-up of it. So GitHub Copilot is artificial intelligence for your code. So as you are writing a great teacher.

infer so, I'm also a big fan of both of our sponsors today, one of which is Sentry, and the other is Sanity. Now Sentry And discover new ways to make your life easier. So head on over to century.ioforward/eventsforward/ There there is ways to get Copilot for free, but most of them are also kind of, like, privileged ways. Right? You have to be kind of like a open source project,

how useful and how good it actually is. What about you? Yeah, I think it GitHub,

I'm either fawning over how incredible it is. Like, I just wrote some code, and I have no idea how it was able to

code snippets and code completions A company and your source code is extremely important to you. There's lots of companies that will not even put a line of code up on GitHub because,

It's next level. Wow. This is amazing the model

Gone paid. So, like, everybody was kind of in trial for the longest time, and people are getting really used to it. And now they flipped it over and said, Okay. Well, now it's $10 a month, because it's coming out of beta.

Has been out for, I don't know, maybe 6 months, a year. I'm not sure how long it's been out for, but I've been using it, and now they have You can scale it, fit, fill, max, min max, flip it,

Yeah. So I'm I'm either

As well as just for being able to scaffold out code extremely. I guess I said speed. It's very, very quick and very accurate,

For you, domain names and hosting and all this That's kind of fun to to see what what it thinks.

I'm typing, and it pops up with some hugely irrelevant thing, and I'm like, Get out of here. Go away.

As soon as you talk about GitHub Copilot, you get either people who are, like, the same as the syntax above So let's just kind of go through those those questions really quickly. Is it ethical? Whether you trust that or not, I guess, is up to you. Yeah. I

for for using it. And I have been amazed at

Is it is it worth it? You know, like, Oh, a great teacher. Thank you. Oh. Cool. Citrix

and speed,

that it can do it, and of GitHub Copilot was trained on

Pepe Le Pew. And I'm like, oh, that's so good. I love you, GitHub Copilot. So let's let's

easily whatever a conditional or whatever thing I'm trying to write, even sometimes while writing the comment scaffolding or even, you know, just occasionally just being like, Dang. I cannot believe this figured this out, and it's perfect. And then other times,

So,

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And Welcome to Syntax.

He got he got 40 subscription service tools. Like, I I but I saw I saw some Twitter thread a couple weeks ago, and some guy was like, here's all the productivity tools I use, and there was, like, 40 tools. And I would say most of them were, you know, an $8 a month subscription. And I was just thinking,

People who have are able to pay for it and not. I hope not, but,

swoosh a day of, like, oh, man, that just saved me us. 15 minutes, or I didn't have to stop and go look it up. Or to me, it's just like I didn't break concentration

Like, it was a

it. 50¢ a day. Oh, yeah.

potentially, you know? Yeah. And and your your employer can obviously pay for it if you're not employed and you're just learning. You're stuck writing everything by hand trying to get a job. Like, yeah, you're right. I mean, there is a total discrepancy there.

But I would have my business pay for it. And if I didn't have a business, would I pay for it? I honestly don't know. Maybe not, if I wasn't making money full time as a developer and I didn't have a job doing this stuff or whatever, and I was just trying to get a career, I probably wouldn't pay for it. That's a lot of money that, So,

Man, that guy's gotta be rich.

Giving value in that way or, like, I get co I'm gonna be, you know, full full consideration here. I get it for free for being a GitHub star.

So if Sky, if you were not getting it for free, would you pay for it? Yes.

the fact that I'm a GitHub star,

No prob of course. Like, I mean, if it saves me, you could do the calculation. Does it save me 2 and a half minutes a day? Then then it's worth it. And then it's another thing to look at it and, like, wow, I'm paying if if it gives you one good so let's let's talk real quickly about, like, what is GitHub Copilot for anyone not listening who hasn't tried it before? Oh, that's good. So that is AI encoding. Let us know what your thoughts are on it.

and maybe not necessarily one that I was Yeah. I'm I'm not one to love paying monthly for things.

I'm spending a lot more money on these extra additional subscriptions for stuff that I Yeah. Probably don't need. Because it's it's really easy to say,

you know, I get it for free. So but if I didn't get it for free, you know, I I might feel My my favorite kind of robot is the one that's complimentary

I mean, that I we always talk about this death by 1,000 subscriptions, permission to use that as the train a model? No. But, like, it's public. So how am I gonna prevent anyone from

Contributor of note. You have to have projects that people rely on or use. So, like, you could do that. But to do that first, you must have something that is actually on GitHub,

It's it's really easy to just add another one onto the stack until you see your monthly bills or you look at your budget and say, holy cow.

$250 a month just to maintain this Empire I you're I need to write the code myself. I'm gonna forget how to do it. It's a crutch.

us are are gonna be coming down the the tube as well.

Probably, our This is something that I feel like a lot of the concern around is probably coming from someone is able to just write a comment, loop over movies, and display the title for each and an H1 tag. Literally, GitHub Copilot will do that for you.

I because there's a lot of things out there.

GitHub Copilot and all of these AI based things are tools that are Wesley, Bose, I don't love Amazon as much as I love To that, I say, you mean the same company where you already store all of your code? GitHub.

things like that. And and to that, people are always like, okay. But, like, You have to pay for it. Is there going to be a larger gap now? Is there the has and has nots? The people who can afford

because I know best based on what you're writing, you might be thinking, yeah, I have snippets, Wes. It's good. It's it's not snippets. It's not code completions. It's not auto suggestion.

than than what we are normally used to. It'll Allow us to go much faster, much more accurate,

Wesley.

And I think a lot of people that makes them anxious because that's Literally their job. So is it gonna take our jobs? It might. It honestly might. Like, there's a lot of things.

just as good as if I were to pay somebody. And you can't help think, well,

Well, next question I have here, is it gonna take our jobs?

Like, I make good money right now

a $120 a year, which is which is pretty pricey. I was surprised. I remember people saying, what would you pay for GitHub Copilot? And I said, Probably $6. And now they came out with 10.

the arguments to an array or I know how to loop over these specific things. And if all of a sudden, Yeah, exactly. I'll be mad when GitHub all of a sudden starts putting out I guess because I make all my courses stuff open as well. So there's

AI voice over, AI graphic design. It's Getting really good to a point where you're like, oh, it's actually And that that starts the question of saying, Hey. Here we go.

Not Wes.

it makes the things like looping and scaffolding out code much quicker So that you can sort of focus on the next thing.

is that, So that's where we're at right now. Is it worth $10 a month? Or if you work in 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, is it worth 50¢ a day. Does it give you 50¢ a day worth of value?

Like, That's the first time you've ever answered that question with it. By every single time we answer that question, it's like, I don't know. Yeah. But now it's like, yeah. Who knows?

There's that South Park. They took Gerdurbs.

use it in some kind of way. I I don't like it kind of, but it's See, that is how it is.

For me, this is something that I don't know my personal answer for because

not explicitly giving permission, but you're kind of inherently giving permission,

the ethical concerns? I very much do. And Did they make you a bad developer and all sorts of things? We're gonna be talking about what the options are for big, big cost,

I'm not that bad of a developer. I think it makes you dumb. I'd rather write it myself.

Yes. But in the same regard, do I also understand of that type of thing even Yeah. If I probably should be. It. It just isn't something that bothers me that that much. I I know that some people are are definitely more bothered by it. I think that's going to be kind of my Line in this entire episode is that maybe I should be worried about it, but for some reason, I just, like, cannot find myself to be worried about it.

Yeah. I'm not gonna make a decision, when I was coding. Oh, Oh, let's go to MDN, and then, oh, I'll open on Twitter. And and before you know it, I'm I have to look at the syntax or the technique. Exactly. And it's just like, Or even you don't even need IntelliSense on that type of thing. It just automatically

Yeah. But at the same time,

scrape it and

do I like using it? And do I think it's awesome? Yes.

not necessarily all of the licenses allow for use of that type of thing because there's different open source licenses out there.

train itself on it. I I mean, I would I would assume that it. Literally, anytime you put anything publicly available on the Internet, you are

You know, did I give GitHub the explicit,

using that code to, And we're gonna be talking all about what we think about them. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me, as always, is Wes Bos.

all of the open source code that is out there. And, to me, it's worth it. I think I was a little bit Shocked at the cost, like we said, but I think that

it's public and open source.

if it's ethical or not. What because Scott is. No. I'm not going to. I I honestly

if I put my code

It's probably full of errors.

So that is GitHub Copilot. Let's talk real quick about what are the alternatives So there's that. That gets in the way for me sometimes, but But I don't think it's something that is making you dumb. I simply think that it is something that makes you more efficient of, poop websites that I put online.

at typescript and Scott Talinsky. Wow.

Yeah. AI is in the the cute stage of it right now. We're like, oh, that's Yeah. Before It's like the the benefit meets the the concern level.

a That's awesome. Here, let me do it.

I think that would be great. I love doing these types of things when it tries to guess. That's fun. Yeah. Scott Tolentse is Probably real. That's probably a real sentence. I'm I'm writing it in a, TypeScript thing. K. Let's let's get another one. The syntax Boss and Scott machine learning based this happened, I don't know, about a month, month and a half ago is that GitHub Copilot a great teacher.

Let me open mine.

Yeah. Then it it starts learning from it. So let me delete. Let me delete everything. Here we go. So Kite is another one. I used Kite probably a couple of years ago for probably a year.

the actual coding part, I I don't feel like it gets in the way at all for me. I find it very useful.

it it once you give it a couple things,

podcast is like, really suspicious

Podcast ever.

I do find that with comments, especially, podcast

to me. Yeah.

I like to type it out into a comment, and I will find GitHub Copilot will try to finish the comment for me. I'm like, no. No. No. No. I'm trying to Part of my thinking process is writing the comment so I can understand what the code needs to do.

Syntax with ML Powered Coding Companion.

the So, like, is there now going to be a greater divide between

Don't do the comment for me as well.

Hello, guys. Scott Talinski is b, and it auto completed to being a little lazy here. I know I'm.

So You are looking handsome today. What? Wes Thank you. Boss is better to the greater world to

Wow.

I I find that the even when it adds comments, usually, comments are a nice way of saying exactly what I was going to say or it completes my thought. It's like auto completion for your thoughts sometimes Yeah. Which feels wild to say, but it does. It it kind of, like, almost it predicts what you're going to say. I actually just A fun little experiment here. I just typed in Scott Tolinski and Wes, and then it auto completed Boss talk about the best way to learn code.

I can do that one. Okay. So West Boss is b,

it takes our jobs and puts us out on the street.

the craziest,

Monday. Monday. Monday.

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