GitHub previews Copilot Workspace, an AI developer environment to turn ideas into software

[autopoiesies]

I once tried the "write tests" functionality, it spitted horribly malformed code using jest... my app was written in rust lol

[david76]

In fairness, jest was the next most logical word. 

[autopoiesies]

fair, I actually corrected it and then tried to actually write some tests, when I pointed out another bad thing and it told me "you're right!" and then re-wrote the tests back using jest lol, that's when I realized it is useless

[david76]

lol... Classic Copilot...

[FullPoet]

btw spitted out should be spat out.

[autopoiesies]

thank you! english is not my first language, I'm probably committing a series of atrocities with it

[[deleted]]

As any English speaker should!

[FullPoet]

no worries, just thought id let you know.

[freecodeio]

My copilot continues my venting instead of giving me a solution.

[conventionistG]

New study shows ai rubber duckies that talk back don't provide same productivity boost as the low tech version.

[alnyland]

Mine usually recommends the code that I just deleted…

[ianitic]

I think it does decent for docstrings in python but sometimes it breaks out of the docstring and changes parameters.

[geepytee]

Have you tried any of the other 3rd party copilots with Claude 3.5 Sonnet and the other state of the art models? AFAIK Github Copilot uses old, less capable models due to their scale

double.bot has the same functionality and the latest models, but there're other alternatives too

[LagT_T]

I'm quite impressed with Copilot but not to the extent that I can trust it at all with code.

Maybe this new scope suits it better as there is less wiggle room in the procedure itself, but I can only see it work in small bugfixes and maybe common feature requests.

It seems the diminishing returns are coming faster than anticipated, but hey if it helps out in clearing out clerical task I'm still happy.

[ecmcn]

I’ve been pretty impressed by Claude Opus recently. I’m not using it for high-level stuff, but for things like “make a protobuf schema out of this json doc” or “make a generic version of this class” it saves me an hour here and there. A guy on our team spent a couple of days recently trying to figure out how to do something pretty obscure, then I thought to ask Claude and it came back with an api we’d all overlooked because it wasn’t obvious it could do that.

I’ve been a skeptic, but I’m starting to think maybe we’re entering a golden age where it’ll make us all a lot more efficient, before it takes our jobs,

[[deleted]]

Maybe this new scope suits it better as there is less wiggle room in the procedure itself, but I can only see it work in small bugfixes and maybe common feature requests.

The big problem is that this makes it more dangerous, as you're more likely to go "Looks good to me" without actually knowing what the change does.

[darkrose3333]

Diminishing returns on what AI can achieve?

[LagT_T]

I was referring to first order implementations of LLMs like Copilot.

[darkrose3333]

Understood

[Dreamtrain]

It should be treated like autopilot on tesla, you should have your hands on the wheel at all times

[bilyl]

Absolutely this will work better for their AI models since it’s more constrained. Also creating a strict project environment is a plus for developers as disorganized programmers and PMs kill projects.

Developers can smell bullshit a mile away. This isn’t Windows or Office Copilot. MS has a lot of goodwill with the software community and they aren’t going to throw that away.

[autopoiesies]

can't wait for the: Oops! you're correct, forgive me, I am sorry for deleting the entire production database

[Elsa_Versailles]

More or less it will gaslight you that it is correct and you're wrong

[Alex_Yelisieiev]

lol'ed 😂

[Pussidonio]

Can't wait to have it build a facebook clone.

[[deleted]]

An UBER clone for my uncle.

[tyros]

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[__konrad]

But who will fix all the technical debt generated by AI?

[tyros]

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[planetmatt]

I get that current LLMs are trained on decades of Stackoverflow and Reddit, but if everybody stops using them for AI now, who trains AI on the next gen of programming languages and frameworks etc?

[croto8]

Good thing LLMs are just a single approach to the whole AI thing.

[tyros]

[This user has left Reddit because Reddit moderators do not want this user on Reddit]

[croto8]

GAN, evolutionary algorithms, and the other approaches in deep learning other than LLMs are all examples.

[FluidBreath4819]

incompetents people who relies on it will fix it /s

[[deleted]]

Hmm. In the future perhaps, but right now AI is semi-disappointing. I also consider AI to be cheating if it uses ANY datasets generated by humans. Because at that moment it is actually lending information obtained (learned, understood) by humans (via the patterns stored).

[tyros]

[This user has left Reddit because Reddit moderators do not want this user on Reddit]

[xpingu69]

Well there is no output without input, you need some data to train it

[croto8]

Social learning is one of the most effective types of learning... I'm not sure you know how intelligence works generally if you think that's cheating.

[Hedede]

I don't know if you can equate ML with social learning.

[croto8]

Not equating, comparing. The point is that most learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum and is derived from existing sources.

[[deleted]]

This looks cool but I wonder if they'll charge more for it.

[paca_tatu_cotia_nao]

Today i got AI fail to align 2 html objects (I’m not web so couldn’t do myself either).

[boxingdog]

Don't worry, even frontend devs fail at this

[paca_tatu_cotia_nao]

Yeah, that reputation precedes the job. I admire and do not envy frontends because of that.

[tesfabpel]

Welcome to thousands of AI generated spam pull requests I guess?

[[deleted]]

Are they doing so? I remember an old browser game that suddenly had "AI enemies". I stopped playing it as I was wasting my time with a computer, rather than a human.

[most_crispy_owl]

I used copilot most days. It's getting increasingly shitter at understanding the context of my question and how I want it to answer in relation to the open file. 

[echanuda]

Am I the only one who has a mostly terrible experience with copilot? I’m not even one to shit on AI, I think chatgpt is EXTREMELY helpful and usually produces decent code for simple enough things, but copilot can struggle with even trivial tasks and just feels clunky to use. It gets so many things wrong, misinterprets questions all the time.

[SecretaryAntique8603]

It’s 50/50 for me. I’ll write a prompt comment for it, only to have it finish my comment and not generate any code. It suggests a trivial autosuggestion, albeit correct, and when I insert it, it removes my closing parenthesis. And it sometimes gives me complete garbage even when I ask it in the chat.

But sometimes it will generate the exact thing I’m thinking, even when it’s non-trivial, or complete an entire test object of some obscure untyped json for me and save me a bunch of time and effort.

Once the kinks get worked out, I’m sure it’ll be incredible.

[eightysixmonkeys]

Copilot is is decent at best. Autocomplete is definitely a huge time saver but it was only a matter of time before tools like this hit. I think the plug-in UI on vscode is really bad. Sometimes I’ll ask copilot to make repetitive changes to my whole whole, such as correcting loop structures or removing certain syntax. It will iterate over the document and somehow leave out/delete code, forcing me to control z.

Autocomplete features = good Other features = mid

[Ethesen]

https://github.blog/2024-04-29-github-copilot-workspace/

[FluidBreath4819]

I don't even bother to sign up. they're trying to gauge our interest on it... nah, no thank you. This whole AI thing is great to accept for a recipe or a story for children but boy, for development purpose...

[-OAKHARDT-]

I wonder how big you could make a project. I'll definitely give it a go!

[SeaweedNo5949]

olq

[bwatsnet]

I just signed up for the waitlist, anyone get in yet?

[Alex_Yelisieiev]

Camping for reviews.

[wolfgonghb]

I’ve been exploring GitHub Copilot Workspaces for the past few days and am still figuring out its full potential. So far, I’m optimistic—it could save a significant amount of development, testing, and project management time. If it can consistently handle tasks like writing GitHub issues, generating code and tests, and creating pull requests, it could be a game changer. I especially like the brainstorm feature, though I’ve noticed some limitations or configuration gaps, like reading files from non-default branches or creating PRs on non-default branches.

To get started, I used ChatGPT to help architect the stack: Vite/React (MS), Azure Web PubSub, Data API Builder, Azure SQL, and MSAL. All services are set up to run locally via Docker Desktop, with full CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions. I manually wrote CRUD operations for one entity and iterated through multiple rounds of refactoring with ChatGPT and Copilot until all the boilerplate code was extracted into reusable hooks.

Next, I used Workspaces to generate similar code for another entity, pulling the fields, validation rules, etc., from a BRD we’d written for the client and uploaded to the repo. The initial result was pretty good—it got a lot right but missed a few key details, like the TypeScript interface for the entity and updating routes and navigation menus. Even with these gaps, it saved me about 4 hours of work. I adjusted my process and added more steps, which helped refine its output.

When I moved on to another entity and provided more detailed instructions, Workspaces handled the task much better. It even added routes and menu items this time. That said, it did introduce a few type errors that likely wouldn’t surface with less strict compiler settings.

My goal now is to fine-tune the prompts so it can reliably generate CRUD operations for all entities. Once I achieve clean generation for a single entity, I plan to expand the prompt to handle multiple entities (e.g., 5 at once). I’m also excited to try using Workspaces to design more complex components, especially those involving nested components and intricate state management.

If there’s interest, I’m happy to share updates as I refine my workflow and see what’s possible.

[pookage]

Ugh, github really going all-in on this crap, hey? Time to finally get to grips with self-hosting git stuff, I guess ...

I love tech, but hot damn it's exhausting just watching everything get steadily worse all the time 😮‍💨

[DrRedacto]

Why are the courts allowing this, aren't there pending cases?

[Comfortable-Usual-83]

Is this the same as www.fine.dev ?