Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucasmullens | Hacker News Reader

What's the use-case for this? Hopefully not for commenting code.

This only seems to be able to explain syntax, which seems pretty useless for anyone who isn't new to the language they're using. Am I missing something?

View on HN

The use case is exactly what is stated on the box. You select a bit of code in a language/syntax that may be unfamiliar to you, and it tries to explain it better in English.

I should try it with decompiled APKs in Smali.

The point of code comments isn't to explain what the code does, unless you're writing a tutorial. The point is usually to explain the intention of the author. If a person knows the language, they don't need an explanation of what the code does.

I'm wondering the same thing. There is one example in the discussion where explaining syntax seems useful, a regular expression. There's a bunch of existing solutions for that, and the explanation generated by Copilot is wrong.

It's a pretty straightforward, understandable task - which then leads you towards making your own tweaks to it / writing something new.

It may also just be an interesting attempt at something that could be great depending on how well it worked - it's an experiment. A general "explain to me what this code does" that was as good as a human explaining overall what is going on could be very useful in more complicated parts of a codebase.

My final thought is that being new to a language and needing to dig around in a codebase is something I do quite a lot and so it could be useful even if it's quite basic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com