GitHub copilot - Big Pros vs Big Cons

I started writing this article, three months ago but never got to finish it but now it seems more important to share this

I was one of the first people to sign up for GitHub co-pilot trial version, I was impressed with it. It is the first AI programming tool I used and it improved my efficiency by say 2% – 7%.

When the trial period was over and co-pilot launched the paid version, I was skeptical about if I needed co-pilot, I wasn’t sure if the increased efficiency was something I missed, or if it affected my work much so I opted not to pay at the time.

A couple of months after I got heavily involved in a couple of software projects and I began missing the hints and the extra suggestions co-pilot offered, now I needed all the assistance I could use to improve my efficiency. — My thought was if I could get say 2–3% increased efficiency in one project, spread across the four—six projects I worked on it would make a significant difference. So I subscribed for the paid version 😄.

Frankly, my second stint with co-pilot was even better, It greatly improved my efficiency this time I would say 7–12% this time. To be fair I think co-pilot was more helpful this time because I had been reading a lot of technical books on Software Design, Architecture, and Algorithms. — That was when I wanted to write this article, and somehow in between all the projects I have not been able to move past the title of this article, so here we are 😅 :

My thought and verdict on this, taking the current tech/software development ecosystem and the future of tech and software development into consideration.

GitHub Co-Pilot is an amazing tool, what is more, is that GitHub also announced GitHub Co-Pilot Enterprise license that in summary helps enterprises write code ( — ie generate code ) and as such

1. GitHub Co-Pilot (AI tools) will greatly improve software developers' efficiency and this will make good developers better. It can make a significant highlight of a developer's strength
2. On the organizational level, With better developers and even better tooling, organizations will need fewer developers to achieve more.

The negatives:

1. There will be more gap between good developers and bad developers, great tools in the hands of good people make them better people. — We might argue that not-so-good developers also have access to these same tools, correct, but part of what makes a good developer is knowing the available options and the right option to use in an instance (use case) and why that is the best option
2. There will be even more layoff developers because again, organizations will need fewer good developers to achieve more.

A side effect I think about this for developers is; software engineers will slowly evolve into software architects because AI tools will help generate codes and the engineers' role will be to review, and design solutions & strategies for functionalities

These are my thoughts on GitHub Copilot as of today. Of course, this is also true for other AI programming tools.

Look out devs 😉