What do you think happens when enterprise software meets big data and user generated content? Idk, ask Github. These guys are sitting on a goldmine. The paradise of every big company. The only reason they're not faang is cos it's niche but they'll probably be influential (read, big bad) in the coming years

I predict the copilot thing is a benevolent side. Or maybe it still seems so since it's still in infancy and hasn't aggressively started snatching most developer jobs. What will become of us when that time comes? What other form of technology can computer still require our assistance to create?

You are aware GitHub is owned by Microsoft, right?

People who think that copilot will snatch developer jobs can’t be real developers in my book.

If your job can be snatched by copilot no offense but you probably weren’t doing anything that great

@CoreFusionX I was hoping someone would ask: what does that have to do with anything? What's the implication of github belonging to Microsoft? Does it make it less a warehouse with massive data at their disposal?

So sad to see how much the thread has been derailed. It's almost as if nobody read the damned post! Why are you lot going on about copilot taking jobs, when I clearly referred to what it can become in future. If you don't believe it's realistic for a computer to replace a human developer within our lifetimes or later, I'm afraid, you're living in a bubble

@Nmeri17 the second half of your rant was about copilot.
Nothing has derailed.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about what development actually is.
It’s about developing something useful for humans. Humans are involved in this by definition. An AI would need to ask a human what it needs to do. And the human would need to specify what it needs. This is a non trivial task. Development today is about collecting requirements AND implementing them. Development in the future might be less about implementing but it will still need to be collecting requirements. There is simply no way how AI can magically know what a human wants. It needs to interact with someone who is experienced in that: a developer.

@Nmeri17 about github and MS:
It sounded like you wanted us to be aware of the possibility that some big company gets its hand on the data that github has. But that already happened. That is what @CoreFusionX was referring to. It sounded like you were not aware of that. And I agree.

@Lensflare thanks for clarification but that's not at all what I meant. I'm saying they are Already a behemoth in their own right and we're all at their mercy

@Nmeri17

You are at their mercy as much as you want to allow yourself to be at their mercy.

Git is decentralized by nature and nothing forces you to use GitHub.

Host your own repos, and you are set.

🤖🌎💥

@Lensflare I don't know whether I've ever seen anyone who admits the precariousness of the human developer suggest an AI will magically know what the requirement is. That's just absurd. A human being doesn't have such expectations, why would a software? Computers can "understand" natural language. Even without natural language, have you seen Behat and other BDD tools? Target bhaviour is not that complex to require conscious effort to translate into code. From reviews, all copilot needs is comments about intention or a method name. Seems to me like a thin line between that and coming up with those things by itself, by reading business requirements

I don't have any affiliation with it. I should probably highlight this since I seem to be the guy with the tinfoil. It's only natural that the owners of such a tool will seek to optimize it by bypassing certain assistance.

If you think architectural patterns matter to a bot maintained software, remember that minified JS works just fine

@Nmeri17 I have no doubt about that some say, AI will outperform any human on any cognitive task.
However, it can do so without actually understanding the needs or wishes of humans.
As long as the task is well defined and can be communicated to the AI without ambiguity, AI will have no problems to do it.
A good example is something like finding solutions to mathematical problems.

However, if the task is to understand the motives and needs of humans, I highly doubt it will be possible. And that’s why I’m certain that AI won’t be completely able to do our jobs as developers. Not even close.

@CoreFusionX you don't get it, pal. I'm not concerned about my data like all the guys mad at corporations selling their data. Jesus. I don't have any incentive to pool the database of package managers on my machine

I'm talking about data in a sense that they can look at all the code, patterns, functionality etc and derive some information from it that nobody else (perhaps, bar smaller vcs platforms) can have. It doesn't matter if one person pulls out or the entire dev world boycotts their app. I'm saying these patterns can determine how and what next generation of software will be like. The data doesn't have to be personal. It's just gigantic blob (excuse the pun) of software history that can't realistically lie fallow. If you think a free product will do that, then I don't know what else to tell you

@Nmeri17

Oh I get it alright.

Of course the state of current software determines how the next generation will look like.

Patterns didn't exist back in the 60's. They surfaced and evolved from lots and lots of development tasks, as a way to facilitate problem solving.

You can see it happening today. Going from monolithic apps to microservice architectures is one example.

So GitHub can analyze their dataset, as they do with copilot.

So can you if you so wish (it reads from public repositories).

I don't see why extracting new abstractions or patterns (be it by humans or AI) puts anyone at any mercy. They will be new stuff you'll have to learn, just as happens nowadays.

I, speaking for myself, of course, but some here will agree, do not have the least bit of fear for my job security. If anything, AIs will make the boring parts of implementation less boring, but there will always be new problems to solve, which is what an engineer does.

@Nmeri17 I think you misunderstand: how bad we humans are st describing what the developer has to develop.
If you can't explain it well to an average person without any interpretation or edge cases then an AI won't be able todo it. And if you can describe it that well then you can also develop it :D.

@Nmeri17 you can scrape github if you want to, so their advantage might be not as big as you think it is.