What happens when GitHub can auto suggest entire PRs for open issues?

3 points by kyletns 3 years ago | 2 comments

It seems only a matter of time before Github/Copilot/ChatGPT (all owned by Microsoft) will be able to take the text from any open issue on your repo and suggest a PR which might fix that bug or add that feature. Obviously, as a developer, this sounds like a WILD superpower.

"Upgrade entire front end from Bootstrap 4 to Bootstrap 5"

"Add integration tests for account creation and account settings"

"Add the ability for users to upload their own avatars onto their accounts using the carrierwave gem, then display those avatars next to the username everywhere"

This feels wildly different to me.

Every engineer becomes an engineering manager?

I mostly just read tests and request screenshots now?

I can solo code an app in days that otherwise might've taken months?

Holy dang.

What else aren't we talking about, yet?

kyletns 3 years ago |

I guess one implication of this will be the continuing rapid decrease in cost of software development. Everyone who previously could barely scrape together a functional app will now be able to launch advanced, beautiful, feature-rich apps. Quality of products could improve vastly (quantity will improve vastly).

pipo234 3 years ago | |

Quantity, fair enough but quality?!

What could an automated system like copilot possibly trained on our own commits possibly learn about quality that humans did not insert themselves?

If anything, they will facilitate the transfer of past expert knowledge to novices trying to build software that (to some extent) looks like existing software. Great! But now we have empower mostly new, inexperienced developers with the tools for more rapid development of software.

I might be a party pooper, but IMHO software quality to a great extent lies restraint, in lines of code that were never written. Until Github automatically purges low quality projects, I remain very skeptical to all this.