GitHub Copilot free plan stopped working – rate limit exceeded
github.com
github.com
> This week, we've had to take down some of our Copilot resources for maintenance. While we did our best to source extra capacity elsewhere, we've been forced to limit some free users for the period of time where one of our busiest models is out of commission. We expect that this will cease to impact your use of Copilot after the 16th.
The dumbest part about this whole thing is I would happily pay $10/month for Copilot if given the option. However, GitHub won't even let me switch to a paid plan! The setting in the admin panel simply says that it's already paid for and won't allow me to switch.
As a copilot skeptic this is the first compelling use case I've seen. Love it!
This is also temporary based on a maintenance window and should return to normal on Monday.
I can't be the only one that is concerned by the title of this post?
Why is copilot being used by students? That seems... like that should be against every school's policy?
With a calculator you still had to have enough knowledge to properly input any formulas. In school you were also still forced to learn the fundamentals with less featured calculators.
Also a calculator was an accepted tool once you are out of school. AI tools like copilot are still controversial within the industry and have no business being in education.
But it meant I got good at programming, but had limited math solving time.
> AI tools like copilot are still controversial within the industry
Those of my colleagues who dared try it greatly appreciate it.
The rest of us don't think they're cheating. They're just being productive.
> have no business being in education
You can say that.
But it won't change whether students use AI-powered learning tools.
These tools force us to rethink education so that we don't simply verify if people did something they could have got help with, since now help has become cheaper. Using a computer should not be considered cheating. It changes the game, and anyone stuck in the old game thinks it's cheating, while everyone in the new game are trying to do something else now.
Knowing, or not knowing, how to use autocomplete (ML powered or not) isn’t going to change their employability one iota.
The problems were usually designed to emphasize the thing you were trying to learn at the time, so once you were beyond simple arithmetic then "I think I'll need a calculator for this step" was a clue that you were on the wrong track anyway.
The other important part of that at least in my school, we had to use a graphing calculator but were also not allowed to use certain models that made things too easy.
That’s exactly my concern here.
Once you’re taking algebra it should be a assumption that given the time you can do basic multiplication, division, square roots and others given enough time but there isn’t any point when the more important part is solving other issues. That’s the simple stuff so why not make that easier as long as you learned how to get where you need to get.
But can you imagine having a tool like this when taking data structures?!?
First off, this tool is still a new tool so "properly" does not exist yet and even if it did it likely won't be the same in a few years.
Second, we should be actually teaching programming and how to solve problems (and how to search for them, even if you do just copy and paste from stack overflow you had to understand enough to find it in the first place).
This is a shortcut that you should be using once you understand what you are actually writing.
Edit: Or are you prepared to make the same argument that using something like chatGPT is perfectly fine for any papers students turn in because they are "learning to use AI tools properly"
Yes, because I believe all so-called creative fields will be dominated by AI in the near future. Programming jobs will mostly be replaced with jobs writing prompts for the AIs that write the code, stories, make the art, music, etc.
If people want to learn programming and problem solving, it would be better to do so online, and in their free time, as a hobby. At least in the US, that won't mean taking on a lifetime debt burden in the midst of a market working as aggressively as possible to make you obsolete.
I'm not convinced of that. Mostly in that for every "easy" tool to do things like make forms for input, store data and print reports... there has always been a limit to where you need an actual developer/programmer to do more. And in many cases, it's more work to customize the tooling than if it was written in a more programmer friendly environment to begin with.
Not sure if this is still the case, but last time I checked Microsoft Office had student discount, but was not generally free. This seems like a similar situation.
Free alternatives to try: Codeium, Tabnine (trial), Replit (trial)
Another super long discussion of students having issues: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/43634
[edit] I'm aware this is just a maintenance window, but still a >1 week severe degradation to the point of unusable without any warning whatsoever isn't a great reflection on how Github Copilot views their free tier users.