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“Instead CoPilot attempts to solve the most general problem, have the engineer state their intent and let the AI produce the code.”

And here in lies the rub, 90% of the time, the engineers intent is wrong. That’s what real pair programming will help you with and what an ‘ai pair programmer’ will not. It just helps you build something that’s probably wrong faster.

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I actually find the "build something that is probably wrong faster" really helpful. I frequently write a function and a quick bit of documentation about what it should do, let copilot finish it, realize my intent was wrong, rethink the intent, etc. If I didn't have copilot I would follow the same process, but it would take a lot longer to realize my intent was wrong.

It takes some time to learn what copilot is capable of and how best to prompt it, but I'm my experience it very quickly pays off.

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