Did you watch the GitHub Universe keynote earlier this week? Or ought to I say, the GitHub CoPilot keynote?
I gained’t speak concerning 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 regardless 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 target of their whole 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 complete software program improvement course of. Open a GitHub difficulty, describe your drawback, 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! 🧞
Just lately, I’ve acquired a number of fairly pessimistic emails that target what may 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 improvement, and there’s an excellent likelihood it’ll meaningfully change the business. I’m not pessimistic about it, although. We’ve been via massive modifications earlier than, and so has nearly each different business. 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 difficulty, 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, deliver it on. 😂
Dave Verwer 