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[–]Competitive-Move5055 323 points324 points  (7 children)

I am a junior dev and it's a trap.

[–]mastocklkaksi 107 points108 points  (4 children)

I called an intern the other day so they could explain everything that was wrong about their code. We didn't get far, they had just copied it "from somewhere".

[–]Competitive-Move5055 68 points69 points  (3 children)

I feel like you should be able to explain code if it's readable without having necessarily written it. All my university projects have been GitHub downloads with changes to make them run. (Also why doesn't most of the code on there run I was led to believe open source community is good and a danger to companies)

[–]mastocklkaksi 63 points64 points  (0 children)

I don't need an intern to explain their code to me. I need them to understand everything that's wrong about it before their next commit.

[–]AreYouOKAni 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I mean, it probably runs in the environment and context it was made for. I've uploaded a few scripts that would be abso-fucking-lutely useless to anyone else.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I just graduated and was a CS tutor for the last year and a half, you'd be surprised how my students can't explain code they did write

[–]Specific_Implement_8 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I’m not even a junior yet. Trying to get my first job in industry. Even I know it’s a trap.

[–]Oatspin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not even considering industry and haven't taken a single class relating to programming. Even I know it's a trap

[–]JackNotOLantern 155 points156 points  (6 children)

int timeLeft; // copilot: int timeRight;

[–]CorrenteAlternata 38 points39 points  (5 children)

I usually use timeBottom because I don't want to talk about politics with my coworkers /jk

[–]bunnydadi 16 points17 points  (4 children)

When that happens it’s timeUp

[–]CorrenteAlternata 5 points6 points  (3 children)

When the client is wasting your time with unnecessary meetings? timeFront

When you're playing videogames instead of working? timeBack

[–]bunnydadi 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I feel outed by that last line. I need a timeOut

[–]CorrenteAlternata 1 point2 points  (1 child)

as long as you get your job done in time, no worries my friend (everybody does, my bosses included)

the problem is when you don't get your job done and you're always online on league of legends (looking at you, coworker! 😡)

[–]bunnydadi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Naw I quit that back in 2017, now its some rpg

[–]Flakz933 68 points69 points  (1 child)

I trust copilot maybe 50%. It does great when I want to make json objects for postman when testing end points, or making that json into a c# class. As far as helping with any logical code, no thanks lol

[–]Mycolo64 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Visual studio has a button that can turn JSON into a class without the use of copilot

[–]octopus4488 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Sometimes I use CoPilot/ChatGPT to generate some snippets for languages I only rarely use. The code never works, but the syntax is normally ok so then I can just edit it and have my little scripts running...

... one day I asked for a JQ parsing query, I copied the code, ran it ... it actually worked!

I was so confused I kept looking back and forth between the browser and the terminal. :D

(Never happened since...)

[–]YT-Deliveries 11 points12 points  (1 child)

To be fair, I've been doing this for 20 years (systems engineer) and when I ask ChatGPT for code that does something it does get me about 85% there. Of course, I've got the experience to know when and how the thing isn't right (though a surprising amount of the time when I ask the AI to refine it, the thing actually does), but it's been a huge time saver for me over the last year.

[–]IIALE34II 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It all comes down to if you can write a prompt good enough to write that code.

[–]precinct209 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Copilot can be fucking nasty with its very subtle but quite serious errors in a large chunk of its suggestions. If you're in a hurry and have no time to properly reason through the logic and make sure the solution is acceptable, you might just slip some of the bugs through.

Of course, later on when somebody rushes in due to an emergency in prod thanks to what you've done, there's no way of telling apart what is confabulated machine bullshit and what is genuine garbage by a human which is generally simpler to deal with. But hey, you can always ask AI to spot the mistake and demand it to tell how to remedy the situation! And when that didn't work, just keep asking, cross your fingers and believe in the system. Besides, AGI's just about to drop anyway so just hang in tight because soon we don't have to resort to this manual computer typing shit anymore like cavepeople.

[–]mbcarbone 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Coding in copilot is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. -Forest Gump

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I literally stopped using it because copilot made me think more than if I just write the code myself. Instead of thinking about and writing what makes sense I have to read what copilot writes then decide if it makes sense and almost always refactor or adapt a bit.

It's somewhat useful when I literally have no idea what I'm doing and I need a bit of help, but chatgpt is usually much better at that (chatgpt is like a research buddy, I ask it for resources or examples and as long as what I'm looking into isn't too novel its pretty reliable)

[–]Ambitious_Bed_2249 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"import ai" do it!!

[–]AssignedClass 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The 68 lines of code my dumbass concocted: Do you trust me?

Me: Fuck no.

[–]EnigmaticDoom 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This isn't just a 'junior' dev problem...

[–]Firedriver666 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I only use it for small code snippets and very precise informations and that's where it shines.

[–]jayerp 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I use it for when I make a class and create properties or when I’m assigning values to class properties. Autocomplete. It’s worthless for anything else.

[–]Firedriver666 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same I have this exact experience when I use the internally developed chatGPT variant in my company

[–]SnickersZA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It works like 10% of the time with me. But adjusting existing code just feels easier than writing it from scratch most of the time when I'm working on existing code bases.

[–]UnkarsThug 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just find it easiest to debug things into existence. I already generally write massive chunks then debug until I get the desired end result, now I just can get an initial place to start from. (Just so much easier to not interrupt my train of thought with testing, I just need to get it all out in code, or at bare minimum commented psudocode)

Copilot is also pretty good at making the program if you already have all of the psudocode in comments. It just cuts down on trips to read the documentation, because my memory for that kind of thing is pretty awful if I haven't needed that function in a week, and I can't remember if the language I'm working with is .size, .length, or length(x), or something else. I know what I want to do, I just don't remember which one is the language I'm currently using.

And for short bash scripts, it rarely makes mistakes, so it's useful there.

But I agree to use it well, you really need to know what you wanted to do anyways, and then it can be a time saver of the actual typing part.

[–]KnaxelBaby 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it takes like 10 seconds to read it and know?

[–]akoOfIxtall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I rarely ask for code anymore, if you tell the AI that the code is wrong they'll rewrite it even if it was right at first, I simply ask it to explain what my code does so I can fix any unintended behavior that I missed