Ask HN: Do you use co-pilot or ChatGPT for code? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you use co-pilot or ChatGPT for code?

2 pointsmooreds12 comments

As these tools become more capable, are you using them for production code, documentation, spikes, or for example apps?

Or are you worried about the legality of the code generated and how that might ripple back and affect the product or company?

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Copilot/Gpt has removed many of the situations where I need to consult documentation or stackoverflow for something quick. In some cases it’s much better than official docs for clarifying how to use a particular function/class/parameter/etc. I haven’t used it at work, mostly because I don’t think my employer wants copilot phoning home while I’m working on NDA’d projects. For my personal projects & experiments I use it all the time. I find it to be an extraordinary productivity boost & really helps me stay in the editor without interrupting flow. If nothing else, that’s worth $10/month.

I use it for basic things like automatically creating Spring Boot rest services in personal applications when I can't remember the annotations. I find it quicker then googling. If it were work code I would just look at an existing code base. I've tried it for more complex tasks and the code it generated was nothing close to the required algorithm.

Me neither, but I'm curious how useful it could be for code review (but only in open-source projects).

Why not? No access? Concerns about legality? Haven't found it generates correct code? Something else?

#1 I'm not a script monkey.

#2 It's just as easy to write stuff, than to carefully check for dumb AI errors.

I code to learn new things, not just to get code done.

Of course, that's not for everybody. Perhaps, back when I was employed as a software engineer, I might have considered it, but even then, coding is such a joy, a play to explore new ideas, I'm not inclined to let some AI do it for me.

Has anyone had any success doing testing on existing code? cf unit tests

I use ChatGPT a lot.

Is this for code you are getting paid for, or to explore new things, or just to ask questions: "how do I <x>?"

Have you found that it has been down quite a bit lately as use has grown?

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