Hacker News Reader

Comment by plondon514 | Hacker News Reader

I'm leveraging this to build https://codeamigo.dev. Basically it's learn to code, but with an AI assistant. The main reason people drop off of coding tutorials or stop learning is when they see their first error message. I'm already seeing people get un-stuck by using the AI as an assistant, this tech (GPT) is going to completely revolutionize learning.

View on HN

Looks very cool. I am also working heavily in this space (using AI to help learning).

One minor point: In your demo, you state that "Today, almost 50% of code is written by AI, so why shouldn't you learn how to code with AI?"

Citation? I thought this might be true of developers using Copilot (based on their recent publications), but even that seems a bit of a stretch. I guess you could claim this because it's so easy to generate LOTS of code with an AI model. How much of that code is used, though? Really 50% of ALL code written now?

Thanks for checking it out!

"Today, GitHub Copilot is behind an average of 46 percent of a developers' code across all programming languages -- and in Java, that number jumps to 61 percent." - https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2023/02/15/copilot...

This tracks since 90% of all Java code is boilerplate.

That post just cites an original [1] from someone at GitHub which says:

> Case in point: When we first launched GitHub Copilot for Individuals in June 2022, more than 27% of developers’ code files on average were generated by GitHub Copilot. Today, GitHub Copilot is behind an average of 46% of a developers’ code across all programming languages—and in Java, that number jumps to 61%.

I'm not sure what this means. GitHub does not have the ability to measure Copilot usage across all code written anywhere in the world, so surely it can't be that. Do they mean code generated by Copilot as a fraction of code produced by someone using an IDE with the Copilot plug-in? That number still seems high to me.

[1] https://github.blog/2023-02-14-github-copilot-now-has-a-bett...

Even if they were somehow measuring all code created in the world, considering it's even easier than copy & pasting general code to ask AI for shitloads of code without even bothering to review it, so code created would be quite a poor metric compared to code put into production at least once.

I guess it depends on how they calculate the percent. I assume it's by character count.

So it wouldn't surprise me. For repetitive code it's pretty good. And even with non repetitive code, once you start typing a bit it is good at finishing it.

Especially in a verbose language like Java. How much of copilot use is something that autocomplete would have handled anyways?

Check out the new StarChat model by hugging face, might be useful for your project

Your website looks nice, but I don't like this statement: "Today's developers didn't learn C before learning Python [...]" Makes me feel like I am a "yesterday's developer" and that it is bad thing.

How about binary before Python?

I think the parallel in that sentence doesn't work with binary and C. I would rephrase the sentence to something along the lines of: Today's developers don't use punched cards, why should you learn how to code without the most modern tools?

BTW, in some countries, you learn binary in grade school :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com