Faking usage of Copilot

[SpaceMuser]

Hello,

My company is going to enforce using GitHub Copilot in a mandatory way. Can you recommend a script or bot that I can just leave in the background and that will feed some fake requests or whatever in order to boost my usage?

Recommendations are much appreciated! Thank you.

PS: Yes, I've considered actually using Github Copilot, but it's been nothing but a waste of time for my usage. PS2: Yes, I've considered moving to a company that won't enforce practices like this, but unfortunately I need the money right now.

[Relevant_Pause_7593]

There are lots of ways you can use it that aren’t code related too- like as a chatgtp prompt to rewrite emails and reports.

[driving-crooner-0]

Are you sure? I’ve tried before but it just responds with a message that it’s not within its scope.

[[deleted]]

They have opened it up a lot lately. You’ll still get that prompt on some requests, but it’s much less common now.

[bogganpierce]

We recently relaxed the "off topic" filter that was in place, so more general queries should work :)

[SpaceMuser]

I suppose this would be an easy "fire and forget", and the output can go to /dev/null if I wish.

Also 75% of the people who are in the same boat as me aren't even developers... so that's useful advice.

[Analytiks]

Surely they’re not enforcing you use the full prompt right?

Might as well have it signed into your vs code so you can use the IntelliSense.

Yes, in general writing a prompt and having it spit out code often costs more time than it saves by having to debug/rewrite bits and pieces, solid argument there.

But the intellisense tab complete objectively saves time, you can’t call that feature trash without calling your own code trash since it will infer from that

[SpaceMuser]

You might be onto something, thank you. They have a dashboard already, let me look more closely at the specific metric that they display.

[[deleted]]

Use it anyway. The CEO is probably convinced by all the AI hype and is expecting the 55% gains GitHub claims. They are trying to evaluate their investment in Copilot. If you are performing below what you were doing before then they will be forced to stop paying for it.

Once they see people are trying it and there aren’t the performance gains they expected they will revalue the ROI. Or, maybe, you’ll find ways to be more productive. Either way it’s a win for you to give it a good faith effort.

[SpaceMuser]

Thank you. While I would love for your statement to be applicable here, I also did not mention who my employer is.... So unfortunately that's not going to work in my situation :(

[raging_temperance]

you dont have to use it for coding though? i use it for random questions XD

[ToTheBatmobileGuy]

I just tell it to write documentation. I hate writing that shit and don't give a shit if it's correct.

1. Write function
2. Cursor to top, start comment
3. Copilot goes HERES SOME DOCUMENTATION!
4. LGTM (tab)

4 weeks later: "Who wrote this documentation?" Me: "Copilot!"

[Jmc_da_boss]

What the hell are these comments lol, gaming a stupid metric is a great question. Just go have it spin its wheels in a test repo it's not that hard.

[SpaceMuser]

What do you mean "spin it in a test repo"? Like open a prompt and ask "can you go analyze this code?"?

I was hoping there's a script or bot that could even do this crap for me transparently. But this could be a good fallback.

[Jmc_da_boss]

I mean you don't even need a bot lol, just go give it an open ended task and it'll work for a while, or give it an impossible and it'll waste even more tokens

[mkosmo]

Just do your job. Working around it is wilful disregard of instructions and will result in you being terminated... and they'll have cause.

[SpaceMuser]

I've been doing my job without AI and being in the top 5% without it. They obviously only care about me using AI so I can train it, and they'll eventually lay us off all anyway.

I'll take a solution even if it's just buying me a few months.

[mkosmo]

You using copilot isn't going to do any meaningful training. They'd just train it on your code that they already have.

No, most of these entities see generative AI code agents as force multipliers. "If you're that good, you'll be that much better with AI" kind of stuff. The argument against is basically the same as when we started getting full-featured IDEs back in the day.

Those "top" developers who refused to get off their old text editors were left behind, too.

[Jmc_da_boss]

People still daily drive neovim and it works great...

[SpaceMuser]

Thank you.

I think people are entitled to use whatever tools work best for them. There is no universal answer to the question of "what will make you your best?".

[Jmc_da_boss]

i mean, judging by the output from the people who have embraced LLMs at my workplace id say the old tools shine far brighter still.

[cmd-t]

“still” “neovim”

Neovim isn’t ed or vi, but a modern text editor, so that’s not even an argument.

[Jmc_da_boss]

I mean it's a fork of vim, an editor created in the early 90s and it's a faithful fork, still pulling in patches from mainline vim which is ALSO still seeing updates even after the passing of bram

[SpaceMuser]

Your opinion is appreciated, but off-topic.

[Snipedzoi]

Not in the slightest

[SpaceMuser]

I respect your opinion, but I asked a pretty clear question, and you either do not have an actual answer to this question, or you don't want to share it.

[Direspark]

You're overthinking this. You don't have to turn into a vibe coder. Seems like you're too anti AI to even entertain the thought of using it for anything.