> The onus is on you to convince the skeptics.

Is it?

Look, I don't care at all if you use copilot; you can use notepad to write your code if that floats your boat; do whatever you want.

What the parent post said is: Copilot is useful; it helps you write code with autocomplete suggestions.

If you think that you don't get productivity gains from an IDE or you're in the 'no IDE makes you more hardcore and better programmer so never program with an IDE' camp, we just have to agree to disagree.

So, I have no interest in that conversation.

...

However, there is a more interesting conversation here we can have:

Given that you have an IDE and use autocomplete:

1) Does Copilot give suggestions are meaningfully useful?

Yes. I honestly can't give you a better answer than that. Yes, it does, it's quite good.

If you don't believe me, try it.

2) Is it better than regular autocomplete?

Look, forget the 'Look, I typed 'process user form and display on UI' and it autocompleted a whole application for me!!' hype.

That's stupid and that's not how it works.

It's an autocomplete. It can autocomplete large chunks, but they're generally rubbish. ...but it does two very interesting things:

- It suggests things that are contextually correct.

For example: even though its rubbish at C++ syntax, it generates valid UPROPERTY and UFUNCTION blocks for unreal code. If I write a `for (y = 0;...` on an array, it generates the associated `for (x = 0;...` when I'm iterating over a 2D array.

If I have a function which takes a pointer like:

> UFvContainerWidget* UFvContainerWidget::ForEquipmentDef(UFvEquipmentDef* EquipmentDef, bool& IsValid)

I press enter and it pops up:

if (!EquipmentDef) {
IsValid = false; <--- WTF!
return nullptr;
}

Sure, it's a similar pattern to other code in related files, but still. This surprised me. I've never encountered an autocomplete that does that before.

Sometimes the suggestions don't make sense, and the larger the chunk, the less sense they make.

...but the suggestions that do make sense, make you regret not having it when you don't have it.

Like... regular autocomplete.

It's just a tool; it works very well at small scale autocomplete tasks.

- It can suggest comments from code as well as code from comments.

Literally, I can go above a function and type "/*" and it'll suggest a comment.

These don't always make sense, but often they're pretty close, and it saves me 20 seconds typing.

You have to carefully read these comments, because they tend to get random crap in them, but
once again, for short comments its not bad.

Again... it's surprisingly good. Not perfect. It doesn't write your comments for you... but, it's easy to get into the habit of getting it to autocomplete "Returns null if the object is invalid" for you instead of typing it out.

3) Should I use it?

Look, I literally do not care if you do or don't.

What I take issue with is people saying 'it has no value'.

Does autocomplete have a value? Then this has a value.

Saying it has no value is just trolling.

Is it worth the cost?

Well, it's free to use right now.... so, well, you can't beat free right? :)

Longer term, would I pay for it?

Probably (** Personal opinion only: Maybe... you should try it and decide for yourself?)