Did you watch the GitHub Universe keynote earlier this week? Or ought to I say, the GitHub CoPilot keynote?
I received’t speak in regards to the state of AI, the CoPilot expertise itself, or any different potential points in my remark at this time. All of that may change over time, and irrespective of the place my opinion would land, I need to save my inbox. 😬 As a substitute, I need to discuss it extra broadly.
GitHub is clearly all in on CoPilot, and to show that time, it was the main focus of their complete keynote. CoPilot in Pull Requests, producing descriptions and explaining code. CoPilot in editors and IDEs, each first-party and increasing out into third-party too. CoPilot in all places.
Then, because the keynote closed, they previewed “CoPilot Workspace”, and it’s an evolution of CoPilot throughout the complete software program growth course of. Open a GitHub problem, describe your downside, shuttle with the AI to outline and edit a spec, then hit a button and have it open a Pull Request with the code and checks applied. Magic! 🧞
Just lately, I’ve acquired a number of fairly pessimistic emails that target what would possibly occur as this expertise matures and turns into able to issues like CoPilot Workspace. What’s going to all of the software program builders do as soon as we’re out of labor? 😱
AI brings the potential for enormous change in software program growth, and there’s a great probability it’ll meaningfully change the trade. I’m not pessimistic about it, although. We’ve been by huge adjustments earlier than, and so has nearly each different trade. It’s progress, and if AI doesn’t drive it, one thing else will.
If we do find yourself in a world the place we will write a GitHub problem, press a button, and see an ideal change get deployed, it’ll imply we’ve got to get a lot higher at writing points, and we’ve been preventing that battle for many years! If that is what makes that occur, carry it on. 😂
Dave Verwer 