Coding Co-pilot
And just like that programmer’s were replaced by machine learning and pressing tab.
GitHub Copilot is a development plugin that uses AI to auto-complete what you’re coding. The AI was trained using github projects as its learning source. You start coding, press tab, and it gives you a list of what it thinks you might want next based on what it matches you might be developing.
Nick Chapsas tries out a number of programming tasks from basic data structures, creating an API, a calculator, and even fully implemented fizzbuzz. It does *shockingly* well.
I think this is the next obvious level of auto-completion we’ve had for years. I bet it almost certainly will come to mainline development tools in the next 5 years. It does, however, bring up some interesting legal points if someone unknowingly auto-completes a blob of code from an GPL or closed source project. This treads the fine line of auto-generated code and downright copying. My guess is that using IP violation code scanning tools to detect problems will be even more important.
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