Did you watch the GitHub Universe keynote earlier this week? Or ought to I say, the GitHub CoPilot keynote?
I received’t speak concerning the state of AI, the CoPilot know-how itself, or any different potential points in my remark immediately. All of that can change over time, and irrespective of the place my opinion would land, I wish to save my inbox. 😬 As a substitute, I wish to speak about 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 every single place.
Then, because the keynote closed, they previewed “CoPilot Workspace”, and it’s an evolution of CoPilot throughout the total software program growth course of. Open a GitHub challenge, describe your downside, trip 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 carried out. Magic! 🧞
Lately, I’ve obtained a number of fairly pessimistic emails that concentrate on what would possibly occur as this know-how 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 superb likelihood it’ll meaningfully change the trade. I’m not pessimistic about it, although. We’ve been via huge modifications earlier than, and so has virtually 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 are able to write a GitHub challenge, press a button, and see an ideal change get deployed, it’ll imply we’ve 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, convey it on. 😂
Dave Verwer 