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Comment by cube2222 | Hacker News Reader

I've been using copilot to write markdown files for a while already and it's really useful. Like the Gmail/Google docs autocomplete but way better.

It's also nice that it uses the structure of the current file and (I think) context from your codebase, so i.e. if you're writing structured documentation, it's occasionally able to write out the whole function name with arguments with descriptions, all in the right format. Very impressive.

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The most amazing thing about that context thing is that in VSCode it actually uses your current debugging session as well. For example I have a FHIR resource with a resource_type of "Medication", but its a polymorphic type in Python. Copilot, looking at the other code I wrote and the current paused debugger will actually recommend my next line of code be based on that debug session and recommend:

if type(resource) is Medication:

I think I'm writing 20% of my code these days. I fix up about 30% of the suggestions, unless it's a strip of boilerplate which it almost never gets wrong.

Everything has a unit test in this python codebase so I make sure that it's all correct.

The next step will be to suggest polymorphism and avoid the type checking all together!

I was under the impression that Copilot does not use context from other files, only the current file. Is that correct? Is there documentation about what other files Copilot uses for context if not?

It does use the neighboring files for context. Check out the FAQ (https://copilot.github.com/#faq-what-context-does-github-cop...)

I don't have official confirmation, but my experience is that at least the IntelliJ plugin version 100% seems to be using or remembering context from other parts of the project. It will know how to complete pieces of code in a brand new file, in ways that are very peculiar to my specific project.

I think IntelliJ generally has the feature to autocomplete code in markdown code blocks based on the current project. So that in itself is not a Copilot feature.

It's really useful because it will even understand Angular2 codebases and autocomplete custom components in html snippets.

Markdown is pretty far down the list of languages I'd have expected it to be helpful for, very interesting!

Has it improved since it was let loose? Or.. I suppose what I really want to know is how long until we're out of a job? :)

Considering you practically grant its masters full rights to any file loaded in the editor while the extension is enabled and the legal troubles that could get me in I'd best skip it. Not worth it.

Yeah, I didn't realise how much repetitive work I did before Copilot started autocompleting it for me.

I find it very distracting when writing long-form documentation. Had to turn it off for markdown files.

This is a really interesting use case! I'll try that, thanks for sharing :)

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