GitHub Copilot will get better if it is used more. After 10 retries, this number grew to 57%, improvements which are common in AI development in general. While the AI is obviously not perfect and the developer using it should be held accountable at the end of the day, when trained on empty Python function bodies, it produced the correct result on the first attempt 43% of the time. It has been trained on code and natural English language available public GitHub repositories. In terms of technicalities, GitHub Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex, which is an AI system developed by OpenAI. In an ideal scenario, this means that you could just write a comment describing what your piece of code should do, and have AI actually write out the code. An example of this is where you write a meaningful comment and a function name below it, and GitHub Copilot automatically writes the rest of the function for you including handling the return types. This is because it uses context from your comments, function names, and the code itself to try and develop safe code for you. The dedicated webpage has emphasized that this capability is different than standard autocomplete functionalities available in most integrated development environments (IDE). The 'Copilot' in the branding seems to somewhat emphasize that you'll be the one in control of your code and that the AI pair programmer will learn from your coding style and edits. The technical preview works with multiple languages and frameworks but the key ones where it returns decent results is Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go. This comes via an extension called 'GitHub Copilot', which works with Visual Studio Code regardless of whether it is running on your local machine or on GitHub Codespaces. This debate may pop up again now that OpenAI and Microsoft have collaborated to offer an AI-powered pair programming capability in Visual Studio Code. The debate about whether AI will eventually take over our jobs, including even those related to software engineering, is not a new one.

Visual studio copilot