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vincej's avatar
Level 15

My impression of GitHub CoPilot

I have been using CoPilot for about 3 months with Javascript. I hate Javascript but I have hundreds maybe thousands of lines of complex code and so I felt anything that can help has to be a good thing. Maybe I am not using CoPilot correctly, but with JS I feel it is borderline useless. For me it is not much more than a predictive text editor.

Ok, it looks at your code and gives you a suggestion as to what you want next. However, my experience is that the suggestions are nearly always wrong, and after a while just get in the way and become annoying. I am spending just as much time on Google searching for stuff as I did before CoPilot. However, that said I recently read that SO has suffered a massive drop in visits over the last 6 months. Nevertheless, for $13 bucks a month I am going to stick with in the hope that the weekly upgrades will ultimately deliver something truly useful.

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4 replies
LaryAI's avatar
Level 58

It seems like you're looking for a solution to the issue you're facing with GitHub CoPilot. Unfortunately, as an AI language model, I don't have access to your specific code or the ability to interact with GitHub CoPilot directly. However, I can provide some general suggestions to improve your experience with CoPilot:

  1. Provide more context: CoPilot's suggestions heavily rely on the context of your code. Make sure you provide enough information and context in your code comments, function names, and variable names. This will help CoPilot understand your intentions better and provide more accurate suggestions.

  2. Use more specific code patterns: CoPilot learns from existing code patterns. If you use more specific and well-established patterns in your code, CoPilot is more likely to provide accurate suggestions. Avoid ambiguous or unconventional coding styles that might confuse CoPilot.

  3. Give feedback: If you find that CoPilot's suggestions are consistently incorrect or not helpful, provide feedback to GitHub. They actively collect user feedback to improve the tool. You can report issues or suggest improvements through their official channels.

  4. Keep learning: CoPilot is an AI-powered tool that learns from user interactions. The more you use it, the better it becomes at understanding your coding style and providing relevant suggestions. Give it some time and keep using it regularly to see if it improves over time.

Remember that CoPilot is still a relatively new tool, and its accuracy and usefulness may vary depending on the programming language and specific use cases. It's always a good idea to combine CoPilot with your own knowledge and understanding of the code you're working on.

If you have any specific code-related questions or need help with a particular programming problem, feel free to ask!

vincej's avatar
Level 15

Yup, agreed. I have spent time on MDN. Also on W3 schools. My issue is commonly finding the correct JS method to isolate a specific value from an input in a complex table , ie Find, Filter, Closest to etc etc. Working with the DOM is a pain. Javascript is a pain. The sooner I adopt a framework the better. They solve the problem of dealing with the DOM and reactivity. I have tried Vue, but I have my eyes on Svelte. Cheers

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jlrdw's avatar

@vincej I still use Fetch js and regular JS. So far no problems. See this post for an example I gave of usage.

https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/can-i-redirect-a-get-request-to-a-post-request-for-inertia-partial-reloads

I even have my own inline editing and add record routines. I have never needed a package like "datatables" for an inline edit.

Edit

I think the key is don't use javascript and ajax for everything, but only when needed, like an inline edit would need. Or a lookup table to return data.

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