GitHub's AI pair programmer tool Copilot, has moved from Insider Preview status to prime-time Production for all. With this move, Copilot is now yet another subscription service at $10/month to use its admittedly powerful features.
So my question is this; to anyone who has any experience using Github's Copilot, have you found it useful enough to justify spending $10 a month on it? And if so, how do feel about adding another monthly subscription to the ever-growing list?
Edit: I personally will continue using Copilot.
Oldest comments (42)
Well, Copilot been very useful and once, the thing is if you are doing freelancing stuff then I would recommend it as $10 is not large for that. Apart from that for regular/hobby daily job it may be costly. But the thing is it's addictive and specially the code generation part. So use with care, because it affect work/result(+) and coding skill/speed(-).
So basically if you generating enough revenue from it than go for it.
That's reasonable and definitely makes sense. I'm personally curious about people's thoughts on it, considering the Insider Preview had a sizeable userbase from what I can understand.
You might want to add the discussion tag to the post to increase visibility.
Personally I'm going to stop using co-pilot, whilst it's a powerful tool it's basically just a powerful auto complete feature which I don't feel justifies $10 a month.
Thanks for tip regarding discussion tag, this was a question I just had in my head and I wanted to poll the community on it.
I used it for a while and I didn't find it useful enough to pay $10.
What programming languages did you use? My personal experience is that the offers are very useful for python or PHP, but less so for dotnet.
I used it with Javascript mostly, It was a useful autocomplete but definitely not worth $10, maybe because the value of $10 is much more compare to other regions.
Makes sense. It really is one-part autocomplete, and one-part contextual guessing.
I'm in Sri Lanka, and we are having abit of a dollar crisis, so I understand what you mean regarding the value of that $10 🥲.
That's certainly interesting, since most people I've spoken to that have used Copilot for over a week, and had rave reviews regarding it.
Either ways, its $10 saved. Can't hate on that 😄.
Subscriptions, that bane of our existence....
I'll also continue using it till I feel like it needs to be axed to save on financials 😵.
There is no free plan for personal developer, so I uninstalled it from my VS Code today. Farewell GitHub Copilot.
Fair fair, completely understandable. A few people I work with still have their student emails and are going to continue getting some use out Copilot using them.
If Copilot is truly useful, $10 is really nothing in terms of developer productivity.
That being said, I hope a fully open source alternative springs up — this is the kind of tool that absolutely should be open and hackable. (The open source version still needs to cost something, maybe even more than $10 because AI compute ain't free).
Totally down for an Open Source version of it, without all of its magic being hidden inside a blackbox.
I think an open source machine learning model wouldn't explain as much as you want. What I wish Microsoft to do, is to increase the transparency what material and from which platforms the model has been trained on.
I think you can look over this.
openai.com/blog/openai-codex/
arxiv.org/abs/2107.03374
It’s funny… I both am and am not a good customer-fit.
Am: Not a real developer, would benefit from the feature.
Not: Not a real developer, so unlikely to pay $10pm for it.
I know exactly when you mean.
I'm a hobbyist developer (not even sure if this term is even real), and I've come really appreciate having the Typescript compiler and Copilot on my shoulders. One of them is very strict whilst the other provides useful suggestions.
For now, I'll continue using Copilot, and will probably axe it only if it starts to become a financial burden.
I've loved every second of it. For example I had 4 different files, each for GET, POST, PATCH, and DELETE.
I wrote the first GET file, and then was able to just press tab to essentially auto complete the 3 remaining files. I love it.
I agree with this sentiment. Plenty of times, over the past 5 months, that I've been working in a project and Copilot was there alongside me making my life all the more easier.
I thought it was neat, but honestly use it more like a party trick than a vital part of my workflow. I picked up the 60 day trial, but won't be paying for it when that ends.
That's certainly fair. I've always felt that Copilot should not be a vital part of your workflow, rather just a helper sitting on your shoulder. I'll continue using it till I decide to stop.
On a side note: I've found Coplit to be a tad bit agressive in its suggestions at times. Maybe a something like setting levels of suggestions being provided.
I will continue. Saves me more $$$ worth of time than 10$ a month. So easy math here.
Absolutely agree. It obviously depends on a developers rate, but a $50/hr dev would only need to save 12 minutes to break even. One successful suggestion could save 5 minutes of searching for “that one property/method/etc.”
I have saved hundreds of 10second increments while coding with copilot just because I don’t have to type out so much. On top of the help for correct property names or idiomatic approaches for unfamiliar libraries, it’s a win-win in my book.
I do get CoPilot for free though, as a member of an org that is maintaining a popular open-source library.
For those of you who value CoPilot but can’t fork out $10/mo: can you afford to help maintain a popular open source library?