Copilot also optimizes for speed to a degree. It's akin to advanced auto complete. IntelliJ auto-completion is great. As much as it pains to say this, I don't think I will be as effective writing Java in Vim as much as I am with IntelliJ. The key differentiator is the auto complete speed. Copilot I feel is just auto complete on steroids. It may not be perfect yet, but there is definitely a problem it solves.
Have you used it? My experience was quite atrocious. Copilot is not auto complete. It’s nonsense. I attempted to use it continuously for three weeks. I tried because I know someone who built it and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
It never prompted me with any code that was useful. It only ever slowed me down and caused me frustration. It’s nothing like Intellisense. It’s just trash.
I pretty much use it every day at this point and I notice when it is disabled.
> It’s just trash
I have a hard time relating to this kind of experience considering how useful it has been for me. What language are you writing in btw? When I use it for OCaml it's not that useful, perhaps because there isn't as much OCaml code to learn from :D
Could you cite an actual specific example? I have a difficult time believing what you are asserting that it provided absolutely no value at any point - it just sounds like a baseless ad hominem attack.
I find that it's fantastic for typescript and JavaScript allowing me to flesh out the completion of basic data object containers class definitions etc. extremely quickly.
If I don't remember the exact parameters that you have to pass into a certain NPM packages methods it will usually auto prompt me and help me complete it without me having to context switch to a browser and look it up.
TLDR; the subtleness of its wrongness destroys my ability to follow my train of thought. I always had to take myself out of my train of thought and evaluate the correctness of the suggestion instead of just writing.
For simple things, intellisense, autocomplete and snippets are far more effective.
For anything more complex, I already know what I want to write.
When I'm writing Angular code, it often fills in the correct boilerplate code, and is especially helpful when writing unit tests. I'm also quite surprised when it autocomplete various filter functions.
It isn't perfect, but it's been helpful filling in the mundane, simple stuff.
Sorry to tell you, but if you’re constantly, or even regularly, writing this much boilerplate code, then you probably need to change how you write code. Maybe try a different framework.
I pair program with a guy who completely refuses to use the keyboard unless there is no other option. He uses the mouse to cut/copy/paste everything possible. He is not handicapped. It is frustrating for me to pair program with him because of that.
He will spend an extra 3-5 seconds using his mouse in order to avoid typing.
The only drawback is....constraints. Autocomplete constrains suggestions to those that are valid or at least valid-adjacent (like it'll use something but auto-import it to make it valid, etc). Copilot fails miserably here and I don't yet see it improving anytime soon. Maybe it will, and if it does, it'll be great. But I won't hold my breath for it.
