Copilot and Conversational Programming

submited by
Style Pass
2021-07-02 15:30:15

A month ago, I got a demo of GitHub's Copilot and I've been pondering the implications. Here's what I've realized: Copilot will change what it means to be a programmer.

Will Copilot put programmers out of a job? No more than the invention of typewriters put writers out of a job. What it will do is change the nature of the job. Copilot represents a paradigm shift for the practice of programming.

The naive interpretation of Copilot is improved autocomplete. I believe that's the wrong mental model. Instead, we should think of Copilot as a shift to a conversational model of programming.

About a year ago, I played with an early demo of a GPT-3-powered "teacher" that could impersonate any historical figure. The interface was similar to chat. I talked to Elon Musk, Plato, Alan Kay. Below, you can read my conversation with Plato.

The interesting thing about this experience is how much it actually felt like talking with another human. (That is, if you are, like me, the kind of person where talking about Plato's cave and the purpose of education is a normal conversation 🤣). The responses were rather long, yes. But I found myself hearing a voice in my head while my reading. Just like talking to a human, I found that my question wasn't quite understood and I had to find a way to make myself clear. The conversation moved forward naturally as each response led me to formulate my next question.

Leave a Comment