GitHub Copilot is now available for free

https://github.com/features/copilot

by ksec • 2 years ago

553 382 2 years ago

github.com

kwantaz• 2 years ago

Includes up to 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests per month.

fzumstein• 2 years ago

So basically it’s free for 1 day per month (I only use chat).

__jl__• 2 years ago

Has anyone compared the updated Copilot with Cursor? The main updates I am wondering about are model selection and multi-file edits. I used copilot before these features, changed to Cursor and now I am wondering how much Copilot has closed the gap.

vbezhenar3• 2 years ago

I'm using Copilot daily and I didn't find any improvements over last year. I think they introduced something called Copilot Edits which works kind of like aider judging from screenshots, but it's experimental, so I didn't try it. It's basically glorified autocomplete and that's about it. At least I didn't discover anything new.

x187463• 2 years ago

The glorified autocomplete only applies to the completions. Granted, that's often the primary interaction, but it isn't the whole story. Using chat+edits can enable copilot to make changes across entire file(s). I still haven't found it perfectly reliable for large scale edits, but it has proved useful for handling the sort of busywork that may occur when refactoring. I'd love to hear stories where copilot actually made meaningful contributions to unique/interesting projects. The demo's often showcase making mundane modifications to yet-another-website or spawning a project into existence, which is neither very compelling nor something I do often.

Klathmon• 2 years ago

I've been loving Copilot Edits (their take on the multi file edits stuff). I'm personally still doing the process of finding and adding files to its context/working set (letting it try to do that part just doesn't work great yet), but then it quickly applied edits and gives you a review/checkpoint UI.

The UI is still changing slightly every couple weeks as they improve things and polish it, but it's become a big enough part of my day to day that it's pretty much always open on the right pane of vscode for me.

gregorvand• 2 years ago

Have already moved to Cursor and realised I was only paying Github for Co-pilot - have downgraded immediately. No affiliation to Cursor, but the results are just a lot better and I don't need to be paying $20 to them AND $10 to co-pilot :/

asdev2• 2 years ago

I ditched Copilot for Cursor and never looked back. Cursor might be the only other AI product with product market fit than ChatGPT, it's that good

outlore• 2 years ago

I just downloaded Cursor yesterday.

I was wondering if you have used Copilot Edits and can compare it to Cursor Composer? Is Cursor much more superior when it comes to multi-file edits?

Do you also have tips for how to give Cursor some documentation, is there a way to make it RAG on a folder of markdown documentation files?

rfoo2• 2 years ago

The actual killer feature for me is the much superior autocompletion, Cursor always suggests an edit inline once I stopped typing, without having me to type a prompt to ask it to do stuff. And it feels faster than GH Copilot, too.

For us who prefer coding ourselves (instead of telling LLMs to do stuff and review the result) it is much much better.

hipadev23• 2 years ago

Yeah I'm happy to check it out, Cursor isn't perfect, but at least it feels like it was created by people who code for a living versus people tasked to inject a LLM into an IDE.

bastardoperator• 2 years ago

Isn't cursor a fork of vscode?

qwertox• 2 years ago

Automatic multiline in-line-edits blew my mind. But the AI's eagerness of wanting to edit something frustrated me enough to no longer use it.

digging2• 2 years ago

This has been a sticking point for me since my workplace told us all to start using the new copilot licenses they bought. The ideal workflow for me is usually inline question-and-answer but it tends to insist on editing the code, often in ways that do more than I actually wanted.

JadoJodo• 2 years ago

Has anyone who uses an IDE (e.g., JetBrains, not a code editor) moved to Cursor? I've downloaded it a few times because everyone raves about it, but I've always come back almost immediately because editors can't reliably make changes across projects (among many other things)... What am I missing?

FWIW I use GoLand w/ Supermaven, currently.

joshstrange3• 2 years ago

This is the main sticking point for me, I'm not leaving JetBrains anytime soon. GitHub Copilot + Aider handle my needs beautifully and while I wish Aider had deep IDE integration I can work around that (Yes, I know about the "AI!" command thing, it's a cool idea but sucks in practice). Aider in browser mode has pretty much replaced my back and forth to ChatGPT/Claude's web UI to the point that I'm considering going API-only for both of those (currently pay for the $20/mo plan for each).

lowkj• 2 years ago

I had been using JetBrains (Webstorm and PyCharm before that) for years now and just switched to Cursor a few months ago. I never liked the way AI copilots tacked onto the IDE worked and preferred to just use standalone ChatGPT. Been very happy with the Cursor experience, big improvement in UX from my perspective.

asdev2• 2 years ago

I've tried both Copilot and JetBrains AI with IntelliJ and both are awful compared to Cursor. No multiline editing, no composer, worse at writing tests etc.

singularity20012• 2 years ago

Tried to move from JetBrains to VS Code with new Copilot Edit mode. Moved back to JetBrains and horribly outdated copy paste workflow ... for now. Disruption is imminent though. (And yes JetBrains AI integration got better but the 'insert code at cursor option' is laughable. There is a command to generate code right in the editor too, but not from chat. Also $10 extra. )

PS: One UI feature that I haven't seen anywhere yet is not splitting the screen into code and chat but unifying it.

Also a common approach (e.g. in openai composer) seems to be to modify the file line by line which takes a very long time if the file is long, which (agentic) tools use a diff approach instead?

vr46• 2 years ago

Yes, I finally decided not to renew my über-cheap JetBrains subscription in January and shift to VSCode + Copilot with Claude, then tested Cursor and dropped Copilot. Cursor is still a bit frustrating and gets trapped in circular reasoning a lot, but its features are good, like creating files.

matsemann• 2 years ago

Actually writing code is a small part of what I do in the IDE. So I'm not keen on jumping ship to a whole new editor and lose all the IDE stuff. But I do think IDEs need to step up. The editors will get the IDE features slowly (or be able to work around some of them, like how an IDE can know your database layout and help you write sql, the AI helpers can make educated guesses as well and get close), so the IDEs don't have a big moat.

efsavage• 2 years ago

I can't wait for IntelliJ to get where Cursor appears to be. Being able to combine a great IDE with project-level AI coding will be a huge leap forward.

stadeschuldt• 2 years ago

I've been using https://www.codegpt.ee with the Jetbrains IDEs (mainly PyCharm) and I'm pretty happy with it. You can also bring your own API key.

beyang3• 2 years ago

Check out Cody for GoLand and JetBrains: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9682-cody-ai-coding-ass...

d4rkp4ttern2• 2 years ago

I’m also a JetBrains person and never really “got” VSCode. So cursor was not a fit for me, the VSC kn shortcuts always felt limiting. So I use zed since it can be configured to use JB kb shortcuts. And it’s open source and super fast (rust-based)

raisedbyninjas• 2 years ago

I keep my projects open in Cursor and Visual Studio at the same time. Cursor is only used to interact with the AI.

evrenesat2• 2 years ago

I've been a PyCharm user for over a decade, but recently decided to experiment with VS Code-like editors again. I subscribed to Windsurf pro tier, and while it's quite lacking as a traditional IDE, its AI capabilities are incredible. I'm now considering not renewing my PyCharm license next year. Until (if ever) I fully adapt to Windsurf, I'm planning to use both tools together - PyCharm for the features I'm most comfortable with (where I also use "CodeGPT.ee" plugin), and Windsurf for its AI strengths.

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 2 years ago

Same, would love all of these awesome AI features, but I have to use Rider.

cube2222• 2 years ago

Yeah, agreed.

Personally, I'm using Goland for editing, along with Zed for its AI assistant. I just have the same project open in both, and do any AI editing in Zed.

I really like the AI UX in Zed with the chat window on the right being context for inline assist (and being able to easily include tons of files in the context window).

raincole2• 2 years ago

I personally jumped between Rider and Cursor for a while, and finally settled with Rider.

However I think JetBrains should be worrying. I've been using and paying for JetBrains products for many years and Cursor is the only thing making me consider switching from it.

j0hnyl• 2 years ago

I need to try it again. When I tried it I found it was kind of overblown and went back to copilot. I also wasn't sure whether to maintain two IDEs - Cursor for scaffolding new projects, and VScode for daily driving.

redox99• 2 years ago

midjourney definitely has PMF.

Jcampuzano2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately for me in enterprise it was impossible to convince them to allow us to use cursor since they're not well known like GitHub/Microsoft so they're afraid of what they'd do with our data.

We are allowed Copilot and Chatgpt because of an enterprise contract with each. Luckily copilot has been improving but there definitely was a while where it felt way behind the jumps other products have had in the past year or so.

sleepybrett2• 2 years ago

... and they aren't concerned with what microsoft is doing with it?

insane_dreamer• 2 years ago

Sticking with Jetbrains (Pycharm) which has good CoPilot integration (has an extension for Claude as well but I haven't gotten it working). Tried Cursor but I didn't find it compelling enough to switch.

maxverse2• 2 years ago

I went from VSCode to Cursor 3 months ago. Might come back to VSCode for this, but so far, Cursor feels snappier than copilot.

amelius2• 2 years ago

Looks nice but if it phones home then my boss won't let me use it.

TranquilMarmot7• 2 years ago

If you pay for the "Business" license, then you get some guarantees about privacy + security. It was a fight, but we eventually got the go-ahead from our legal team and are able to use it. It's pretty nice.

Scene_Cast2• 2 years ago

What's currently the best local model one can run? Codestral?

int_19h8• 2 years ago

Qwen2.5-Coder.

nailer• 2 years ago

Try Microsoft Copilot on iPhone/ Android (not GitHub Copilot, this is a general AI product that is not for coders).

Getting answers (with references) to questions *destroys* using Google.

siva7• 2 years ago

I don’t get it. Cursor looks to me about the same like VS Code + Copilot. What am i missing?

vineyardmike• 2 years ago

Copilot is basically just autocomplete for code with a ChatWindow on the side.

Cursor has that, but also other modalities. It also just has a better UX for the core shared experience. Cursor also has their own models they mix with APIs to big well known models.

For example…

1. Cursor’s chat window generates patches (multi line, multi file, non contiguous) that can be directly applied to the file editor with a click, instead of requiring you to copy/paste the chat results. It lets you apply parts of the patches too.

2. Cursor supports multi-line changes (which show up as auto-complete), where the lines aren’t contiguous. For example, if you rename a field in a class, the AI will propose a rename for the Getter/Setter methods, as well as all the uses of said field/method. It’s like all the familiar refactoring tools available in IDEs, but AI powered so it operates “fuzzy matching”

3. Building off 2, they will use AI to move your cursor around (it’s not intrusive).

4. Cursor supports BYO keys for OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, etc. They host their own model which you’d need to pay to access though.

5. They support AI autocomplete and conversation in the command line. Helpful for remembering commands or if you need to change a command to test some change you’d made.

There might be more but this is what sticks out.

tantalor• 2 years ago

ChatGPT doesn't have PMF

Why do I say this? Because their cost to deliver their product exceeds their revenue. That tells me the product (as it is today) does not match the market demand.

vouaobrasil7• 2 years ago

I actually closed by Github account because I don't want to support AI or have my code trained on AI. Now I'm extra happy I shut it down.

fifilura5• 2 years ago

I don't want to support AI or have my code trained on AI.

What are your arguments for this?

karmajunkie• 2 years ago

GP doesn’t actually need arguments for it. As change agents AI companies need to argue why they should be allowed to train on others’ code, and clearly in GP’s case they’ve failed to meet the burden of proof.

vouaobrasil7• 2 years ago

1. I believe AI is detrimental. It makes us go too fast. It's all about production now, pure efficiency over individuals.

2. AI is too dangerous. Whatever innovations used for benign applications will be eventually used for more dangerous applications such as advanced genetic engineering and the military.

3. AI uses too much energy. It's disrespectful to the resources that we have.

4. AI is an apex technology amongst technologies designed to further enrich the elite and strengthen the power structure.

5. AI will also be used to completely replace workers at a speed much faster than other automations and I don't agree with that. The new jobs that have been created are demeaning such as "AI Prompt Engineer".

6. AI is one step closer to technology creating autonomous technology, and that's a bad thing.

Society needs to slow down and find alternative, more sustainable solutions. AI is aligned with short-term economic efficiency and that is detrimental.

Diti• 2 years ago

I have the same opinion as the person you replied to. My arguments are basically that I don’t support plagiarism, and LLMs/diffusion models of our generation have been trained on a massive corpus of copyrighted material, ignoring the fundamentals of the Berne Convention.

I belong to an internet community whose artists make for a third of its population – they are mostly hostile to generative art and never gave their consent for their art to be plagiarized, yet their artstyle end up in Civitai and their content shows up on haveibeentrained.com.

Personally, my hostility towards generative art would stop if training was opt-in, and I would use GitHub again if it, AT LEAST, allowed members to opt-OUT.

sodapopcan• 2 years ago

Private repos exist for a reason. It's reasonable that if you don't want humans seeing your code that machines should also not see your code.

itronitron• 2 years ago

i recently learned about sourcehut.org which has "No AI features whatsoever"

vouaobrasil7• 2 years ago

Nice! I am definitely using this.

colesantiago• 2 years ago

This is great as an entry point to programming and also good for startups.

and with the recent addition to o1 in Cursor the price of a mid-senior is set to around $20.

It has been a while since my business needed to hire more senior engineers for a while, I only needed around 1 or 2 and the rest as interns using Copilot or Cursor.

This is a great time to build projects and get into programming for everyone.

mossTechnician• 2 years ago

That free plan sounds too limited for continuous use. Is this the sort of plan that will convert non-users into paying customers?

Compared to other paid plans for various AI services, this one seems like it's relatively the most enticing.

simonw2• 2 years ago

Yes, this is meant to expose people to Copilot and convince them to subscribe.

poincaredisk2• 2 years ago

Data point: I'm going to give copilot a try now.

semiinfinitely• 2 years ago

soon: copilot generates a comment recommending a SaaS product 25% of the time. Pay $5 month to disable ads-comments

paxys• 2 years ago

Really hope I don't get my open source maintainer Pro plan bumped down to free.

kdaigle• 2 years ago

It didn't. If you had a complimentary Copilot Pro plan, you'll continue to have it so you're good!

simonw2• 2 years ago

The FAQ entry about the free tier for open source maintainers is still live here: https://github.com/pricing#i-work-on-open-source-projects-ca...

OutOfHere• 2 years ago

You can confirm at https://github.com/settings/copilot that you're still on the Pro plan.

jart2• 2 years ago

We still get the pro plan, which saves $10/month. But that's not good enough. Popular open source maintainers deserve their most expensive enterprise plan. Microsoft indemnifies enterprises from me, but they won't indemnify me from enterprises. How is that fair? Is this how they treat the people who make their platform great? Rolling out the red carpet and granting open source developers enterprise privileges is the only way for Microsoft to prove that it's serious.

fire_lake• 2 years ago

That only lasts a year I think? Mine was cut after a while. Although I had stopped using it before that point.

tafath• 2 years ago

It's renewable.

Once awarded, if you are still a maintainer of a popular open source project when your initial 12 months subscription expires then you will be able to renew your subscription for free.

source: https://github.com/pricing#i-work-on-open-source-projects-ca...

verdverm2• 2 years ago

I'd prefer something where I can bring my own model and pay the API costs directly, rather than yet another $20+/m/dev fee

The free plan is not going to work for professional coding

beyang3• 2 years ago

FYI, you can do that with Cody + Ollama. A good portion of our user community does exactly that: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/local-code-completion-with-olla...

verdverm2• 2 years ago

I don't want a local LLM, it is slower, less capable, and slows the computer down generally

What I would like is a deep integration with VS Code using my preferred foundational model

I see Cursor has their own model and support for 2 foundational models, but not my preferred model and they charge a monthly fee.

Supposedly: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/g...

but do I still have to pay microsoft $20+ per month? what I really want is pay-per-usage, not pay-for-access+usage

rvz2• 2 years ago

Microsoft (unsurprisingly) has won the race to zero.

We have had them 'embrace' the wider developer and open-source ecosystem by buying GitHub.

Then they have 'extended' this with partnerships and deep developer integrations in VSCode and exclusive partnerships with OpenAI which in the background was used to build the best tools on the Microsoft platform with added enhancements and extensions.

Now in the new intelligence age, we finally have the definition of what 'Extinguish' looks like to competitors wanting to compete with the best tools available, For free.

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

I think you're ignoring the part where a MBA shows up, figures they have a valuable monopoly and starts it's extortion racket.

Realize: most of the digital ecosystem runs on whales, and thats who businesses go after. As long as wealth inequality thrives, that's the enshittification cycle.

blackeyeblitzar2• 2 years ago

Bundling this with GitHub and giving it away for free reminds me of other times they’ve pulled this same tactic like with Teams. I don’t know why people respect Satya too much - he’s just another typical Microsoft monopolist. Others can also act unethically and abuse market position to grow their company.

snide• 2 years ago

Anyone using the Neovim plugin and suddenly starting to get rate limit errors? I'm already on pro, but it's asking me to upgrade to pro in Neovim?

barrell3• 2 years ago

This happened to me as well. Came back from several weeks off and I kept getting these rate limit windows in vim today. I was/om on the OSS pro plan so I just figured the gravy train ended and unsintalled it

heywire• 2 years ago

I saw a post on Reddit that said this was a bug and they’re working on it.

adhamsalama• 2 years ago

Great. More easily generated garbage code written by other people for me to review.

olup2• 2 years ago

I use supermaven and cline with my own API key, a setup superior to cursor imo. Tried to go back to gh copilot yesterday but couldn't bear it for a full workday, and reverted to my previous arrangement.

jasondjk• 2 years ago

This looks really interesting, cursor has been way better than copilot for me but supermaven looks great. I went down the rabbit hole with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLQuBSuzu2w&t=661s

Your setup sounds interesting. What sort of API key do you use?

olup2• 2 years ago

We have an openai account for the company, so I mainly use gpt4o or 4o mini with supermaven and cline. I think Claude 3.5 works even better.

kgilpin• 2 years ago

FYI supermaven has joined Cursor

https://www.cursor.com/blog/supermaven

uludag2• 2 years ago

I feel like this free plan is just enough to get someone hooked and require them to upgrade to paid.

Like, imagine GPS navigation wasn't widespread and there was a paid service that gave you 20 free trips. Eventually your normal navigation skills would atrophy and you'd be obliged to purchase.

skybrian2• 2 years ago

Some will want to pay more for better service, but it seems likely to be plenty for people who aren't full-time programmers and don't write code every day?

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

This, but _every single thing we rely on_.

Real AI is definitely a rubicon.

snug• 2 years ago

Of course it is, why would they give away something without trying to capitalize on it later

TiredOfLife2• 2 years ago

Congratulations, you are one of today's 10000* to learn about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware and free trials.

*https://xkcd.com/1053/

maelito• 2 years ago

GPS navigation, at least on Google Maps, is there free to get you to click on paid ad places.

xpl2• 2 years ago

It is to collect more data for LLM training. To tap into proprietary code bases that are never uploaded to GitHub.

8n4vidtmkvmk8• 2 years ago

Have you read the terms or are you just saying things?

outworlder2• 2 years ago

imagine GPS navigation wasn't widespread and there was a paid service

GPS is something that wouldn't be invented these days. Instead of the US military footing the bill, it would be some private company somewhere.

beyang3• 2 years ago

For those looking for a free coding assistant they can also use at work / in the enterprise, Cody has had a free tier for awhile: https://sourcegraph.com/cody

- Works with local models

- Context-aware chat with very nice ergonomics (we see consistently more chats per day than other coding assistants)

- Used by both indie devs and devs at very large enterprises like Palo Alto Networks

- Hooks nicely into code search, which is important for building a strong mental model inside large, messy codebases

- Open source core

acc_297• 2 years ago

Interesting, I cancelled my plan a couple weeks ago so I suppose it's nice to know my vscode plugin won't stop working at the end of the month.

If I ever pay for a different AI product I would prefer a pay-by-the-token plan vs a monthly charge since there are often spans of several weeks where I'm not using the tools at all.

mehh• 2 years ago

I cancelled mine today, as I’ve moved to cursor, so this is a great news as I’d still want to use it sometime.

I do think this slightly aggressive tactic, I’m sure they claim otherwise!

Eupolemos• 2 years ago

We got Copilot for free at work, but I found it to be so annoying I disabled it after a week or so.

thot_experiment10• 2 years ago

If anyone is looking for a free/local alternative Continue + Ollama is acceptable. If you're just doing run of the mill programming it will work well out of the box.

I'm glad it's open source so I was able to fix most of the issues I had with it and now my copy is in a great place. The documentation is in places many versions behind the actual code so it can be tough to figure out how to set things up when you're venturing off the beaten path. That all being said the granularity of control you have when using local models leads to an experience that's far better than Cursor/Copilot, I really enjoy that it reads my mind a lot of the time now (because I have prompt engineered it to know how I think).

Ultimately, isn't this just the way of things? https://thot-experiment.github.io/forever-problems/?set%20up...

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

On what kind of hardware/GPU are you running that locally?

deathtrader666• 2 years ago

M1 MacBook Pro is sufficient for a Qwen model.

thot_experiment10• 2 years ago

2x 1080Ti, ~25t/s

Zopieux• 2 years ago

Tried a few models and was extremely disappointed by how dumb the completions are. Basically useless. What local ollama-available models do you recommend?

sorenjan• 2 years ago

Have you tried Qwen 2.5 coder? I've only done very little testing, but it seemed to work pretty well. I used the 14B version.

https://ollama.com/library/qwen2.5-coder

meta_x_ai• 2 years ago

A software developer's time is much more precious than wasting time on sub-optimal models.

Open Weights models has it's place (in training custom agents and custom services), but if you are knowledge worker, using a model even 5% less than SOTA is extremely dumb

thot_experiment10• 2 years ago

100% disagree with this take, the flexibility in controlling the prompt leads to QwenCoder2.5-32b outperforming gpt-o1 and claude sonnet 3.5 for nearly everything that I use it for (true for Gemma-27b and llama3.3-70b, though in this context I'm almost always using the former). A specialist model that's specifically prompted to do the correct thing will outperform a SOTA generic model with a one size fits all system prompt. This is why small autocomplete models can very obviously outperform larger models at that specific task. I am speaking 100% from experience and ignoring all benchmarks in forming this view btw, so maybe it's just my specific situation.

Also, in general I don't find the difference between SOTA models and local models to be that significant in the real world even when used in the exact same way.

flyingpenguin• 2 years ago

I found the plugin did not prompt the model often enough. I would finish writing aline, and go to a new line and sit there waiting to see what the AI thought would be next, only to realize continue wasn't prompting...

scosman3• 2 years ago

Acceptable UX maybe, but the gap between Sonnet 3.5 and open models isn’t worth it. I know people are going to pitch qwen coder 72b, but it’s still a long way off on benchmarks and my time matters more.

thot_experiment10• 2 years ago

You're the second person in this thread to make this point, what are you using it for? I find the difference is basically negligible (in the sense that both get the busywork right and both fail at anything complicated)

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Link should be announcement post:

Announcing 150M developers and a new free tier for GitHub Copilot in VS Code

https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/github-copilo...

ProfessorZoom• 2 years ago

Started using Supermaven since it was free and Copilot wasn't, but I stayed because it's faster and uses recent diffs to aid in generation

bugglebeetle3• 2 years ago

Copilot in VSCode is so far behind Windsurf, not terribly excited about this and still happy to pay for a Codeium pro account. My only fear is someone buying them and screwing up model access, but maybe it’s fine if that is Anthropic. GPT-4 is terrible at coding and o-1 isn’t tell tiene for practical use.

skybrian2• 2 years ago

For anyone else who never heard of Windsurf, it seems this was announced a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127882

vazma• 2 years ago

Tried windsurf and the beginning was amazing, last few days I start realizing that is getting annoyingly stupid and slow. Open reddit and realized lots of people had the same issue with a lot of wild theories about it. I stopped my subscription and I am considering trying cursor just to compare. Tldr;×trying an agent Ai coding assistant was amazing and I think I will never go back!

fuzzythinker• 2 years ago

Concur. Dropped Copilot for Cursor and then tried Windsurf. Windsurf is the keeper for me.

thomasfromcdnjs• 2 years ago

This is me too. Windsurf feels perfect right now.

mdrzn• 2 years ago

Been using Windsurf for a couple months and it was almost perfect with Sonnet 3.5

They recently changed their pricing to some weird "Flow Action credits" system and MOST of the people are dissatisfied with that. I'm still looking for a replacement IDE because I mostly just chat and rarely use autocomplete.

legalcto• 2 years ago

Copilot VSCode felt like a Walmart product. Cursor was pretty good but I had to bail because of the bug where it deletes files when you reject a multi-file change: https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1gkj4xr/reject_chan...

Windsurf has been great. First week, no complaints. Seems to have the best responses too, although the hallucination level of all these is still too high for me to use it beyond trivial cases.

bbbruno222• 2 years ago

Before GitHub Copilot was a paid feature. This only shows to the Cursor team that they are going to the right direction.

The slow elephant enterprise GitHub will never be as good/fast as Cursor, they had their chance but they have joined the party of "keeping the devs under our umbrella with free features" too late.

layer8• 2 years ago

If Cursor remains successful, they’re likely to turn into a slow elephant enterprise as well eventually. That’s rather the rule than the exception, unfortunately.

bbkane• 2 years ago

Are there any exceptions? I feel like small companies can be nimble because they don't have as many customers to lose, but larger orgs need to worry much more about existing customers: scale, migrations, backwards compatibility, legal compliance, supply chains...

forty3• 2 years ago

Is there any solution that is 1- fully local 2- open source 3- fast on CPU only 4- provide reasonable good results for smart auto complete ?

I don't want my work to depend on proprietary or even worse, online, software. We (software engineer) got lucky that all the good tools are free software and I feel we have a collective interest in making sure it stays that way (unless we want to be like farmers having to pay Monsanto tax for just being able to work because we don't know how to work differently anymore)

Sohcahtoa82• 2 years ago

3- fast on CPU only

Unless you've got a CPU with AI-specific accelerators and unified memory, I doubt you're going to find that.

I can't imagine any model under 7B parameters is useful, and even with dual-channel DDR5-6400 RAM (Which I think is 102 GB/s?) and 8-bit quantization, you could only generate 15 tokens/sec, and that's assuming your CPU can actually process that fast. Your memory bandwidth could easily be the bottleneck.

EDIT: If I have something wrong, I'd rather be corrected so I'm not spreading incorrect information, rather than being silently downvoted.

thot_experiment10• 2 years ago

deepseek-1b, qwen2.5-coder:1.5b, and starcoder2-3b are all pretty fast on cpu due to their small size, you're not going to be able to have conversations with them or ask them to perform transformations on your code but autocomplete should work well

samuel• 2 years ago

Fast on cpu it's just not realistic.

Open source, fast and good: openrouter with opensource models (Qwen, Llama,etc...) It's not local but these is no vendor lockin, you can switch to another provider or invest in a gpu.

bugglebeetle3• 2 years ago

You can set up Cursor with a local LLM, connected via an open source ngrok substitute (can’t remember which ones are good). Only recommend doing this on a Mac with a lot of ram so you can use one of the actually useful coding models though (e.g. QwenCoder2.5-32b).

Danjoe4• 2 years ago

Continue VSCode extension.

beepbooptheory• 2 years ago

Working with people who use this stuff a lot has made my current job just so so much harder in every way its astonishing. I used to solve problems with code, now I feel like hermeneut or dream analyzer: absent of human intention, codebases quickly become these weird piles of different idioms, even without considering the hallucinations (those have definitely cost me a few sleepless nights now either way).

But I am just venting. All of yall have clearly won, I get it. I am just grateful I have lived a full life doing other things other than computers, so this all isn't too sad other than the prospect of being poor again.

I will always have my beautiful emacs and I will always be hacking. I will always have my Stallman, my Knuth, my Andy Wingo, my SICP. I feel it is accomplishment enough to have progressed in this career as I have, especially as a self taught developer. But I kinda want to let yall deal with slop now, you really seem to like it!

Maybe I'll get another degree now, or just make some silly music and video games again. It's liberating just thinking about being free from this "new way" we work now.

Thanks for all the fish though!

forty3• 2 years ago

Wait a bit, it won't last

throw2342342342• 2 years ago

In what way - that those things/people doing that will fail? Or the tooling will get better that this is no longer a problem? Completely different outcomes with very different consequences.

xandrius• 2 years ago

I hear you. There was something special about the old days when programming was all about taking your time, thinking through every step, and truly understanding what you were building. I miss the days of punching cards — there was a certain simplicity to it. You’d write your code, feed it into the machine, and if it broke, it was your fault. There was no hiding behind tests or CI/CD pipelines, no auto-fixes or layers of abstraction. It was just you and the machine, and every bug was a lesson you had to learn the hard way. The feedback loop was slow, but it was real.

Now, everything feels automated, fast, and often a bit too dumb. Sure, it’s easier, but it’s lost that raw connection to the work. We’ve abstracted away so much that it’s hard to feel like we’re truly engineering something anymore — it’s more like patching together random components and hoping it holds. I think we lost something when we all started staring at screens all day and disconnected from the hands-on nature of building. There's a lot of slop now, and while some people thrive on that, it’s not for everyone.

hkaal• 2 years ago

It is part of the great plan:

- Buy GitHub and devalue all individual projects by soft-forcing most big projects to go there and lose their branding.

- Gamify and make "development" addictive.

- Use social cliques who hype up each other's useless code and PRs and ban critics.

- Make kLOC and plagiarism great again!

This all happened before "AI". "AI" is the last logical step that will finally destroy open source, as planned by Microsoft.

nunez4• 2 years ago

Don't know why this was downvoted. This is an interesting take that I, at least, haven't seen before.

TranquilMarmot7• 2 years ago

Where I work, we have a directive to use AI as much as we can wherever possible. I was handed a codebase that's been working on by many, many, many different people over the past ~2 years and was written almost entirely with AI (starting with GPT 3)

The only way you can deal with the codebase is to fully embrace the AI. Whenever I want to make anything beyond a simple API change, I have to boot up Cursor and give it 5+ files for context and then write a short novel about what I want it to do. I sip some coffee while it chugs away and spits out some changes, which I then have to go and figure out how to test. I'm not fully convinced that the iteration time is any faster, and the codebase is a hot mess.

It also just feels very stifling and frustrating to me to have to write a ton of prose for something when I'm used to being able to write code to do it! I have to go home and work on other projects without AI just to scratch the itch of actually programming which is what I fell in love with all those years ago.

solaire_oa• 2 years ago

It's hard to address just one point for how messed up this seems, but the first thing that stands out is that I would guess the code volume of this process has to be unsustainable.

Humans themselves tend to write new code instead of using old code- a common problem- but with sensible code structures and CI, code will grow at a sustainable rate.

LLMs continuously barf a steam of new code, never deleting anything. Then you need to provide the barf as context, and the cycle surely must continue until it falls apart. How has this not happened yet?

outworlder2• 2 years ago

This is how I think the current bubble will pop. Yes, these are useful tools that we just now are trying to learn how to use. But wallstreet and bean counters are going apeshit on the prospect of replacing the (expensive!) humans they currently pay for.

Once the codebases become an unmanageable mess I think the pendulum will swing back, hard.

That should buy sometime for anyone not entering the industry right now.

uludag2• 2 years ago

I have similar feelings though maybe a bit more optimistic take. Obviously the AI hype train hasn't taken us to anywhere objectively better. Software has in no way become less buggy (if anything it feels worse in the past few years) and most if not all of the software I use predates the LLM era.

It feels like most developers en masse have taken on some masochist pleasure at deskilling themselves while becoming a prompt engineer beholden to OpenAI/MS/Google.

The upside is that those who take time to learn and improve can write software that most devs have given up the hope of being able to write. Write the next Maigt or org-mode while everyone else is asking AI to generate tailwind HTML React forms!

nunez4• 2 years ago

It feels like most developers en masse have taken on some masochist pleasure at deskilling themselves while becoming a prompt engineer beholden to OpenAI/MS/Google.

It's a weird/delusional timeline, that's for sure.

martin-t• 2 years ago

I feel you.

I started programming because I enjoy understanding something deeply and building things with that understanding. I like to write code that works on the first try because that means my mental model is correct. If I end up writing a bug, I try to avoid using a debugger. Instead, I take a step back, analyze what the code is doing and where my model differs from reality and fix it, often while finding more issues in my original understanding.

There are programmers who take a different approach, they write code that take a naive approach and works 90% of the time, then move on. When a bug manifests (it was there from the start but unless it manifested itself, it didn't bother them), they make a naive fix and move on. Sometimes fixing the bug for real, sometimes causing new ones. Eventually the amount of bugs reaches an equilibrium and they ship it.

LLMs are the second approach on steroids. Since they have no understanding, only statistical correlations between tokens, they produce code of the second kind. I mean, they don't even run their code to check it works. And they sure as fuck don't ask the programmer additional questions. Let alone the user. But they do it extremely fast so it's good from a business perspective. Better to have a shitty product now and beat competition on advertising, then be second.

I used to like open source because it attracted people of the first kind and there was cooperation instead of competition. But lately every project seems to ask for donations and it increasingly attracts people of the second kind.

mistercheph• 2 years ago

llama3.3:70b-instruct-q4_K_M (~43 GB, 2x 3090/4090 or fast memory cpu inference on e.g. macs)

qwen2.5-coder:32b-instruct-q5_K_M (~23 GB)

gemma2:9b-instruct-q6_K (~7.5 GB)

and

https://github.com/bernardo-bruning/ollama-copilot

or alternatively:

https://github.com/ollama/ollama + https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim

TiredOfLife2• 2 years ago

Or just get yourself a cerebras cluster and run full llama-3.1-405B.

sleepybrett2• 2 years ago

'free', you code is the only price they require.

SirMaster• 2 years ago

Not for vs2022?

butz• 2 years ago

Are there any local models that provide only very limited knowledge, e.g. autocomplete and chat for single programming language? Or is my thinking, that such limited model would be smaller and work faster even on CPU, is incorrect?

HyprMusic• 2 years ago

I believe Jetbrains' built in models work like that but unfortunately they force you to disable any competing AI chat plugins so you lose out on access to Claude etc. if you use them.

richardw• 2 years ago

I assume the recommendation-edit feedback loop is valuable and so is access to code/text that isn’t on GitHub yet? Email says “GitHub and affiliates may use your data for product improvement.” Access to all the little changes in between commits seems valuable. If you’re looking to compete on access to data I imagine this helps.

Experts weigh in pls?

elcapitan2• 2 years ago

Is there some way to check what I currently use? I rarely use chat, so 50 per month probably wouldn't be an issue, but completion has become my main completion tool, not sure if I'd stay under 2000..

ryandrake• 2 years ago

Came here to ask the same question. I bet I have 2000+ code completions in a single, fevered, Mountain Dew fueled day of coding, which would be my quota for a month of the free tier.

TranquilMarmot7• 2 years ago

Can you see it here?

https://github.com/settings/billing/summary

I have Copilot from an org I'm in so I just see "You are assigned a seat as part of a GitHub Copilot Business subscription"

elcapitan2• 2 years ago

No, unfortunately it just tells me that I spent $10. There seem to be usage stats for other pro offers by Github, which I don't use though.

ak_111• 2 years ago

Anyone tried replit? Is it worth the money with free copilot now from Github?

pestkranker2• 2 years ago

I hope access to Code Review in GitHub will be available to paid users soon! It's going to be a game changer as a first level of code review before real people get involved with the PR.

timrogers• 2 years ago

I love to hear this as the PM for Copilot code review at GitHub!

We’re running a preview of the code review feature right now, and are looking forward to opening it to all paid subscribers soon.

If you’d like to try it sooner, I can hook you up - just email my HN username @github.com :)

pestkranker2• 2 years ago

I have just sent you an email. Thank you Tim!

igorguerrero2• 2 years ago

I think this is a bad move... I immediately switched, 2000 completions for me (I have it disabled by default on Neovim) is enough, and 50 chats, more than enough I didn't even know they had chat like ChatGPT.

selcuka• 2 years ago

If you've disabled completions and didn't know about chats, what were you using Copilot for?

igorguerrero2• 2 years ago

I have a toggle to enable it back when needed, I found this is way better, for me, to stay focused and make less errors.

But I do enable it, for example when I'm coding in a language or project I'm not used to, I'd say I use like 20% of my coding time, but that 20% is useful, it's when google doesn't work for me either...

orra• 2 years ago

I like the mediocrity of the example they headlined: the user asks for unit tests. Copilot writes only two test cases, so not exactly great coverage. Plus, the test cases uses python's unittest, which isn't as slick as pytest.

SkyPuncher3• 2 years ago

I use Copilot a lot for writing specs. I've come to prefer that it only writes one or two specs to start. It's a good way for me to quickly review it has the structure correct. When it throws too many at me at once, it can be harder to make broad tweaks.

As for `pytest`, I just have to remind it I'm using pytest. "Write pytests for this" is sufficient to get it to do what I want.

crucialfelix• 2 years ago

You can write a prompt stating how tests should be writen in your project. It goes on some .vscode file. It's consulted anytime it's writing a test, even in a conversation. I state where my factory fixtures are to be found.

sionisrecur• 2 years ago

Well they didn't ask for pytest tests. I wonder if AIs are like bored developers, doing the minimum necessary to complete the task instead of going the extra mile and make things better. Perhaps that will be the differentiator in the future. Or they just need to adjust the pre-prompt.

siilats• 2 years ago

For JetBrains IDE-s the open source CodeGPT plugin works much better. Many more models to choose from

dr_kiszonka• 2 years ago

Any mobile devs here using Copilot, Cursor or Supermaven? I am curious if you have any recommendations.

flawn• 2 years ago

On Mobile, my experience was really poor. It really does not perform for e.g. Flutter. Probably not too much training data on Flutter Code.

maskil• 2 years ago

I found that AI models really have a hard time with Android native, kept reverting to the latest libraries which don't have broad support. I had more success with Flutter but still needs a decent amount of course correction.

blackeyeblitzar2• 2 years ago

Microsoft giving away a losing product for free is the exact kind of thing that proves they’re too big. This is just a desperate move to suck oxygen away from startups in this same space that compete with them. We need new antitrust laws ASAP.

swah• 2 years ago

Couldn't they acquire for a cool 100 M or something? Its a VSCode fork!

CliveBloomers• 2 years ago

So you don't have to pay the yearly fee? Also did anyone get the email and Outlook picked up the link as harmful?

sitkack• 2 years ago

They need more training data.

throw2342342342• 2 years ago

That was my first thought too. The Github Copilot CEO recently said in no uncertain words he wants to make everyone a dev - "a billion developers". Of course this is code for make current dev's redundant IMO similar to how everyone can type these days too making typists redundant. The MBA types really really want this outcome for all intellectual work.

I can imagine that good enterprise/business level training data (the layer above the open source widgets we compose) is not as easy coming on the internet as the open source libraries themselves are. But through their free tool they would get access to this especially from small scrappy startup's that will want to save costs. Seeing some startup's go from zero to next big thing on Copilot will be great training data.

limerickwin• 2 years ago

hm.. it seems like I won't use this service for a while as I got the following error message while starting IntelliJ today: You've reached your monthly code completion limit. Upgrade your plan to Copilot Pro (30-day Free Trial) or wait until -4712-01-01 for your limit to reset to continue coding with GitHub Copilot.

mongol• 2 years ago

Wow 4712 BCE was when the pyramids were new and shiny. Just kidding, it turns out it was the first Julian day. Got some help here:

January 1, 4713 BCE marks the beginning of the Julian Day count. This system was introduced by Joseph Scaliger in 1583 CE.

Scaliger selected 4713 BCE as the starting point because it is the nearest date where three cycles—solar, lunar, and Roman indiction—coincide. These cycles are:

The 28-year solar cycle.

The 19-year Metonic lunar cycle.

The 15-year Roman indiction cycle.

huqedato• 2 years ago

I switched to Codeium free tier three months ago and never looked back to Copilot since then. Copilot is a mess on Julia and Elixir/Erlang code.

shlomo_z• 2 years ago

Yeah, codeium free tier blows copilot paid out of water

TonyTrapp2• 2 years ago

They appear to be SO excited about their new feature that they sent an email about it to every single email address associated with my Github accounts. Which is quite a few addresses that have been used for git commits over the years.

hug• 2 years ago

Does that include the email addresses configured in your ~/.gitconfig?

If so, I apologise to fart@butts.com.

TonyTrapp2• 2 years ago

Only if you have manually associated them with your Github account so that they show up as "your" commits, as far as I'm aware (although I'm not sure how deep Github's integration with desktop tools reaches these days)

sexy_seedbox• 2 years ago

But are you Stack Overflow excited?!

sapphire42• 2 years ago

This should not be downvoted :) lighten up you guys!

az2262• 2 years ago

GitHub is scared. It’s losing mind share with startups who are leapfrogging them, Cursor, Poolside, Augment, Cognition, Codeium.

TuringNYC3• 2 years ago

The real cost is that society at large is no longer contributing to the StackOverflow, so problems and solutions are all now stored in proprietary databases (which granted SO also was) but also now stored in an invisible proprietary database

daemin• 2 years ago

The StackOverflow database was open source for a while, but I haven't checked for a data dump since the new management came in.

TuringNYC3• 2 years ago

True, may not be open source, but it is still viewable.

Best for Society: Open Source <-- Where SO was

Medium for Society: Proprietary, but openly browsable <-- Where SO is

Worst for Society: Proprietary, not browsable <-- LLM-based code assist tools

Terretta• 2 years ago

I think you'd find society-at-small was contributing, with perhaps 10x larger yet still quite small number posting but watering down useful contributions, 100x that lurking, and 1000x that just drive-by copy-pasting from SO to their IDE.

TuringNYC3• 2 years ago

Sure, but at least the knowledge the publicly viewable, even if the contributions werent equal. Upvoting, browsing, asking is also a contribution.

AlienRobot3• 2 years ago

"Useful contributions" is subjective. Not everyone is born a senior developer. Juniors, and even children who aren't even juniors yet ask questions on these channels.

Source: I bothered a lot of people on the Internet about C++ when I was child.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan• 2 years ago

There's a rule of tens online: for every comment, there are ten interactions (like an upvote/down ote), and for every interaction, there are 10 views.

So, every comment on a post roughly equals 100 views.

jefftk• 2 years ago

proprietary databases (which granted SO also was)*

StackOverflow's database was public and shared at the Internet Archive until recently: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

They've now moved it onto their own infra, ostensibly so people have to agree not to use it for LLM training: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/401324/announcing-a...

jimjimwii• 2 years ago

Wait, I thought they backed off from this nonsense.

If they really did close off db downloads then I'll never answer a question there ever again. I bet many others wont either. Maybe that's also part of why SE will fail.

The only deal I personally am willing to tolerate is me spending time providing quality questions and answers in my domain in return for being able to download all questions and answers under the cc-sa license and being able to freely download them for offline viewing without an account (via kiwix). No other arrangement is acceptable.

I'll look further into this and update this comment with my findings.

Edit: Yep. No more answers from me. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Maybe small community forums are really the only way to share knowledge these days :(

Buttons840• 2 years ago

I wonder if a purge and a fresh start for StackOverflow would renew interest.

I used to like reading StackExchange sites as a social media site--lots of interesting questions and clever answers. Today, votes have slowed down and the best answers are from 2017, and only niche questions can avoid being closed.

rankun203• 2 years ago

I think there will always be open platforms for us to exchange ideas where Copilot can't help. It's just now simple problems can be solved with Copilot directly, we can finally focus on implementing ideas and optimizing them.

8n4vidtmkvmk8• 2 years ago

I don't know. Sometimes there's many ways to solve a simple problem but some are better than others. On stack overflow you get that variety and that discussion. Copilot just gives one. It might be suboptimal or it might have subtle bugs.

jart2• 2 years ago

Stack Overflow is now a proprietary database too. Given the choice between that, and a proprietary robot offering 10x as much clarity and quality, I'd choose the robot. Not all LLMs are proprietary in the same way as Claude. Many LLMs have their weights publicly available, like Gemma. But I can understand if you feel like a floating point numbers file is de facto proprietary tool. But if you're smart, you would look at this instead as an opportunity to invent the tools that will make this knowledge accessible. I've been working with Mozilla to build a "fantasy mode" feature for Firefox, which works similar to incognito mode, where you have a local LLM generate a synthetic version of the world wide web on the fly. This gives you the ability to explore the knowledge contained in LLM weights using an intuitive familiar browser-based interface. So far it's about as fast as 56k dialup was in the 1990s but as microprocessors become faster, I believe we'll be able to generate artificial realities of useful information we can't live without which are superior to Stack Overflow today.

nativeit2• 2 years ago

Forgive me if I have missed something, but how is a synthetic version of the web (which sounds interesting and impressive in its own right) in any way comparable to a vast, indexed repository of curated and organized technical knowledge shared by experts with nuanced experiences and insights?

but as microprocessors become faster, I believe we'll be able to generate artificial realities of useful information we can't live without which are superior to Stack Overflow today.

Was this written by an LLM bot? It seems…off.

WD-42• 2 years ago

This sounds great! There isn't enough slop in the web, so this sounds like a good way to experience browsing without any non-ai generated nonsense getting in the way!

RestartKernel• 2 years ago

The situation at large is even worse if you consider how Discord moved a significant portion of discussion away from the indexable Web.

I thought of mailing lists as archaic, but maybe we just regressed from there.

spacechild1• 2 years ago

IMO public forums are the sweet spot.

ncr100• 2 years ago

So the real solution is tracking all of your data.

There should be a product, something that you install to capture your own data, and then pseudo-anonymize it and sell it back to databurgers (I meant to write data brokers but I kept this misspelling for lolz).

Is there?

Assistant LLMs like Limitless.AI merged with their older desktop scraper app could be repackaged to do that...

New industry? Or old?

data-ottawa• 2 years ago

I think this only removes the low quality questions like “how do I make X in React”.

There will always be new libraries and software updates, and those will always have corners and edge cases that will foster questions. The LLMs won’t have the answers out of the box until they have something to train from, so there’s still room for StackOverflow.

janaagaard• 2 years ago

Yeah, I agree that StackOverflow it but a shadow of what it used to be, and that this is a shame. But I don’t think that AI is to blame for this - all the interesting discussions had already migrated to GitHub issues. AI is just the nail in the coffin for SO.

toisanji• 2 years ago

I have been using Cursor, but I am a vim user at heart. What is the best plugin I can use that gives us the power of AI coding, but for vim? Every time I look, the plugins seem to be far behind Cursor.

finder83• 2 years ago

https://github.com/github/copilot.vim works pretty well for inline autocompletion

https://github.com/CopilotC-Nvim/CopilotChat.nvim is the best I've found for the chat-type interaction. It lets you choose models/etc.

It's still not quite as nice as cursor, but decent enough that I enjoy using them

strangelove026• 2 years ago

I've been slightly curious about Avante, but I switched to vim about a year ago and still have other things I'm working on first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kzSV2xctjc

azemetre• 2 years ago

Not vim, but neovim:

https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim

Haven't used it yet but it supports many models.

bionhoward• 2 years ago

Microsoft would need to pay me to use Copilot. Seems like a major scam for them to learn from our code and then tell us we can’t use it to make our own competing AI systems. “Limits on use of data from the AI Services. You may not use the AI services, or data from the AI services, to create, train, or improve (directly or indirectly) any other AI service.” From https://www.microsoft.com/en/servicesagreement#13r_AIService... TODAY — the ridiculous focus on AI over core business at github is the number one thing likely to kill the platform. They are coasting on network effects

w_for_wumbo• 2 years ago

"You may not use the AI services, or data from the AI services, to create, train, or improve (directly or indirectly) any other AI service" - It's not like anyone chose to indirectly train these existing systems - this means that anything published online that could be scraped and used to train something is not allowed right?

codebje• 2 years ago

It wouldn't be an online service's T&C document if it didn't include at least one vague, threatening, unworkable, and unenforceable condition.

The useless but true answer is nobody knows what's allowed and what isn't, until it's tested in court. Practically (not being a lawyer, though) I suspect that the clause will never be pursued on its own, because it's bullshit and everyone involved knows it is so.

In your scenario, though, assuming you publish in a way that's not overtly and primarily meant for AI training, I think the "use" of data isn't yours and would be hard to argue as violating the terms of the agreement.

Of course we might take it to the absurd end of this line of reasoning and demand that any code base that Copilot was involved in should have a license term preventing the training of any other AI in it, and we wind up in a place where all AIs are trained on source material they're explicitly licensed not to be trained on, or trained only on a mostly static set of "pre-AI" publications.

Daft stuff.

throwaway888abc• 2 years ago

psssst *it's a secret

If You're Not Paying For It, You Become The Product (2012) https://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/03/05/if-youre...

nozzlegear• 2 years ago

I've been paying for GitHub for years and years, long before they introduced any kind of AI service. I don't use any of their AI products, even though they're now included with my plan. Hopefully that small datapoint shows up as a blip in their metrics somewhere.

cute_boi• 2 years ago

These days you will pay for it and still become the product :)

ADeerAppeared• 2 years ago

It's a good example of how ridiculous the AI training situation is.

They claim it's fair use for them to steal all data they want, but you're not allowed to use AI data output, despite this data literally not being subject to copyright protections on account of lacking a human author.

And especially Github. They already have an enormous corpus that is licensed under MIT/equivalent licenses, explicitly permitting them to do this AI nonsense. All they had to do was use only the code they were allowed to use, maybe put up an attribution page listing all the repos used, and nobody would've minded because of the explicit opt-in given ahead of time.

But no. They couldn't bother with even that little respect.

AlienRobot3• 2 years ago

I wonder how GPLv3 and CC BY SA licenses should be considered when training AIs like this? The model is software, and if it's sufficiently different from the source, it's a derivative work, isn't it?

merek• 2 years ago

I'm having a hard time determining if my private repo code is used for training their models. The GitHub Copilot VS Code Extension states:

Your code is yours. We follow responsible practices in accordance with our Privacy Statement to ensure that your code snippets will not be used as suggested code for other users of GitHub Copilot.

IIRC, I think this statement gave me the initial reassurance I needed to use Copilot many months ago, however I feel like this could be deceptively reassuring. Does it mean they can use my code for training and suggestions to other users after changing the variable names?

I tried to dig deeper. The section on "Private repositories" in their Privacy Policy [1] says: "GitHub personnel does not access private repository information without your consent", with exceptions for security, customer support, and legal obligations. Again, this feels deceptively reassuring, since GitHub personnel and GitHub's AI services are separate entities.

In their Privacy Policy, "Code" falls under the definition of "Personal Data" (User Content and Files) [2], and they go on to list lots of broad ways the data can be used and shared.

Unless I've missed anything, and as other commenters have said much more succinctly, I have to assume that there's a real possibility that my private repo code is used to train their models.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith...

[2] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith...

emporas• 2 years ago

Use tree-sitter, change some identifiers here and there, some function names also, then you can use the generated data for anything you like. Pass each identifier through the cheapest LLM possible and change it ever so slightly.

devops000• 2 years ago

What if I have already paid the annual plan?

Jgrubb• 2 years ago

The you are already a paying customer.

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

It's like the U2 album on everyone's iphone. It's a Homer bowling ball.

hankchinaski• 2 years ago

Copilot is totally useless.

bravetraveler2• 2 years ago

Hopefully the people championing this at work will stop trying to get me to switch

croemer• 2 years ago

The free version has severe usage limits: "Includes up to 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests per month." More of a 7d trial that resets every month.

jusonchan81• 2 years ago

Could this be a strategy to get access to more code than what is available in just Github? More training data means better models I assume.

dsp_person• 2 years ago

I just enabled copilot and I see in the settings this is checked by default

https://github.com/settings/copilot

- [x] Allow GitHub to use my code snippets from the code editor for product improvements > Allow GitHub, its affiliates and third parties to use my code snippets to research and improve GitHub Copilot suggestions, related models and product features. More information in About GitHub Copilot privacy.

Should we still be concerned if opting out?

bravetraveler2• 2 years ago

It's been my experience that, with time, opt-outs from SaaS multiply.

People opt out, some PM or whoever decides they need 'metrics' (numbers to spin)... and more categories or qualifications are summarily added. Starting the cycle again.

I assume they'll send a privacy policy update in at most six months. I wouldn't call it concerning. Routine. I won't participate, that's for sure.

KuriousCat• 2 years ago

Is there something like a startpage that can act as intermediary and make the queries and responses public? And searchable?

solarkraft3• 2 years ago

I have already replaced Copilot with continue.dev+qwen2.5-coder:1.5b on Ollama and don't see myself coming back.

For the last year Copilot completions have been slow, unreliable and just bad, coming in at random moments, messing up syntax in dumb ways, being slow and sometimes not showing up at all. It has been painfully bad even though it used to be good. Maybe it's since they switched from Codex to the general GPTs ...

euoia• 2 years ago

Do you have a guide for how to set this up? I am also pretty dissatisfied with Copilot completions.

huijzer• 2 years ago

Probably via Tabby (https://www.tabbyml.com/)

nbbaier• 2 years ago

Also interested !

mfkp2• 2 years ago

looks like the parent comment hints at https://docs.continue.dev/chat/model-setup#local-offline-exp...

(Assuming your computer has the specs necessary to run ollama)

zxcq544• 2 years ago

Use Continue https://ollama.com/blog/continue-code-assistant

solarkraft3• 2 years ago

Here you go: https://docs.continue.dev/autocomplete/model-setup

The sibling comment also describes the process for chat, which I personally don’t care about.

notsylver• 2 years ago

I've had the opposite experience - I tried continue.dev and for me it doesn't come close to copilot. Especially with copilot chat having o1-preview and Sonnet 3.5 for so cheap that I single handedly might bankrupt microsoft (we can hope), but I tried it before that was availlable and the inline completions were laughably bad in comparison.

I used the recommended models and couldn't figure it out, I assume I did something wrong but I followed the docs and triple checked everything. It'd be nice to use the GPU I have locally for faster completions/privacy, I just haven't found a way to do that.

fortyseven• 2 years ago

The last couple times I tried "continue" it felt like "Step 1" in someone's business plan; bulky and seconds away from converting into a paid subscription model.

Additionally, I've tried a bunch of these (even the same models, etc) and they've all sucked compared to Copilot. And believe me, I want that local-hosted sweetness. Not sure what I'm doing wrong when others are so excited by it.

ghthor3• 2 years ago

Same, tabbyML+llammacpp running StarCoder3B runs great, excellent completions for go, terraform, shell, nix

solarkraft3• 2 years ago

Now automatically integrated into VS Code

Congratulations to Microsoft for owning enough of the stack to make doing this possible.

chmod775• 2 years ago

Hilarious. The code "fix" Copilot suggests in their example[1] is wrong on some many levels. It's trying to use await in something that is not an async function. From the other examples it's clear this is likely React's useEffect. You could not even make that callback an async function if you wanted to - this naive fix for that leads to subtle bugs.

And last but not least: The issue here - if there's any - can already be caught by linter rules like no-floating-promises in eslint/by using TypeScript instead. You don't need a shitty AI linter confidently suggesting wrong code.

That's how you advertise the product? I'm guessing competent coders at GitHub have already been replaced by juniors+copilot.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/FHnsqyP.png

TranquilMarmot7• 2 years ago

been replaced by juniors+copilot

More likely replaced by seniors who forgot how to write code by hand because they're relying so much on AI. I don't think juniors are a thing anymore.

soco• 2 years ago

I've read enthusiastic reports about Cursor but my very short trial experience was quite similar to yours: refactoring by duplicating code, mixing up cases, server connection errors, to the point where I just gave up after one day. It might be me of course and my poor prompting skills but hey if it offers me "rename symbol" I kinda expect it to rename the symbol AND its occurences. Oh well. I'll check again in a year or something.

heeton• 2 years ago

I personally love Cursor but never using prompts. I just use it's auto-complete and smart-tab features it saves me a tonne of manual typing. (I type fast, yet now find switching to a "manual" editor annoyingly slow).

I don't let it write blocks of code, but usually I'm ~5 keystrokes into a line change or addition and it can complete the rest. I also use a text-file todo in the same project to help it with context of what I'm trying to do.

TowerTall3• 2 years ago

I have just complete as month long task of developing a highly complex library in C# (a parser that uses ANTLR) together with claude and cursor and it worked very well. For me trick was to do test driven development and write all the tests first. Then after each code change rerun the tests.

This made it very easy for claude to work out what to do and what needed to be corrected for things to work. Then you get your tests either to write debug statement to the terminal or json serialize something to disk you can paste into the claude chat that helps claude understand the flow of the code and where things goes wrong.

As an added bonus having all those test alse made it easy for claude to write the documentation.

I will not say it was fun because you are sitting doing copy paste all day but i couldn't have written this library without the assistance from clause. cursor just reduced the amount of copy paste actions since it can update the files.

HeavyStorm• 2 years ago

Oh no, cursor _is_ very nice. To be fair I've not used it for refactoring,ore for code generation, but it's great at applying changes to the code when it identifies patterns. Makes everything easier!

gloosx• 2 years ago

Includes up to 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests per month.

Never used Copilot or any AI assisting tool, is this a lot or is it as free as cheese in a mousetrap?

az2262• 2 years ago

Mousetrap.

TranquilMarmot7• 2 years ago

The org I work for pays for Copilot so I'm used to using it.

It would probably take me 10 days to use up 50 chats? 5 a day seems about right.

I have NO idea how many completions I use.

PeterStuer• 2 years ago

Free for upto:

- 50 chats

- 2.000 code completions

per month.

After that it is starting from 10$/month.

t_believ-er873• 2 years ago

Good news

anonymous31415• 2 years ago

How do you disable it again? You can't!

Once you pressed "Start using Copilot" the copilot menu shows up on all repositories within GitHub.com for careless or uninformed users to leak proprietary code to their training set.

GitHub Copilot is now available for free

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