Improving Developer Happiness with AI

GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer that can help you write code faster and spend less time writing repetitive code.This session will cover some interesting use cases for Copilot that could shine a light on its possibilities. This ranges from prompting Copilot to suggest a function based on a comment, learning how to use a new framework, tackling a security or accessibility bug, better documenting your code, translating  code from one language to another, etc.

Agenda:
Introduction to CoPilot
- What is Copilot
- How can you use it
- How it can help you write code faster
- Copilot Labs experimental features 

I will pick examples from the React ecosystem and show how we can fix Security Vulnerabilities and Accessibility issues in some components.

This talk has been presented at React Summit 2023, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

Watch video on a separate page

FAQ

GitHub Copilot enhances developer productivity by reducing frustration, decreasing time spent searching for information, and allowing developers to focus on more meaningful and satisfying work.

GitHub Copilot Chat is a feature that bridges the gap between auto-completion and conversational code assistance, allowing developers to interact with the AI in a chat-like interface to get more detailed help and feedback.

Common use cases for GitHub Copilot include writing boilerplate code, generating SQL queries, creating regular expressions, refactoring code, debugging, and writing documentation.

Yes, GitHub Copilot can be used in other IDEs like JetBrains, although some advanced features like Copilot Chat are currently only available in VS Code during the technical preview.

For businesses, GitHub Copilot ensures that no prompts or user data are used to train the AI models, providing a secure environment for code assistance.

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered auto-completion tool that assists developers by providing context-aware code suggestions within supported IDEs.

Senna is a solutions engineer at GitHub.

AI paired programming tools like GitHub Copilot are designed to help developers be more productive by providing context-aware code suggestions and reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks.

The SPACE framework is used to understand different aspects of productivity, focusing on satisfaction, well-being, efficiency, and flow.

GitHub Copilot aims to augment the developer experience by providing suggestions and ideas that can help spark creativity and innovation, although some users may find constant suggestions overwhelming and may choose to disable it in certain files.

Senna Parsa
Senna Parsa
29 min
02 Jun, 2023

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Video Summary and Transcription
GitHub Copilot is an auto-completion tool that provides suggestions based on context. Research has shown that developers using Copilot feel less frustrated, spend less time searching externally, and experience less mental effort on repetitive tasks. Copilot can generate code for various tasks, including adding modals, testing, and refactoring. It is a useful tool for improving productivity and saving time, especially for junior developers and those working in unfamiliar domains. Security concerns have been addressed with optional data sharing and different versions for individuals and businesses.

1. Introduction and Personal Experience

Short description:

I'm a solutions engineer at GitHub and excited to talk about this hot topic. I remember my first interaction with React, refactoring a massive JavaScript project into React. Now, years later, I'm speaking at React Summit in Amsterdam.

I'm really excited to be here today. My name is Senna, and I'm a solutions engineer at GitHub, and I'm excited to talk about this because I know it's a hot topic on everyone's mind. I know that I really could have used some of these tools when I was first starting out in development. I remember my first interaction with React actually was in my first job, one of my first projects had to do with refactoring this really massive home-grown JavaScript library of a project into React. And my team and I were going to Ryan France's React trainings in a Yahoo building in San Jose. So it's pretty funny that seven to eight years later, I'm talking at React Summit in Amsterdam. So now I live here. But yeah.

2. Introduction to Tools and Copilot

Short description:

I'll introduce different types of tools used by GitHub users, focusing on GitHub Copilot. I'll discuss the research behind Copilot and its benefits and challenges. I'll also showcase some new Copilot features. AI paired programming tools and chatGPT style experiences are gaining popularity. Copilot is an auto-completion tool that provides suggestions based on context.

I have a lot of things that I wanted to get through today. So a quick agenda. I'll just do an introduction to some of the different types of tools that I'm seeing people use when I talk to customers that use GitHub. GitHub Copilot is the one that I'm most familiar with through my work there. And also want to talk about the research we've done behind Copilot. And what does it even mean to be productive and what types of things are we solving here.

And then I'll go into some benefits and some challenges of using these tools. And I'll sprinkle in a few demos of some new Copilot features that we're working on. And then at the end, we'll have some time for Q&A.

So really quickly... What are AI paired programming tools? If you search AI paired programming in an IDE, like VS Code, you'll see a lot of these options come up. And just really curious, show of hands, how many of you are using one of these like AI paired programming tools at the top? Okay, cool. What about GitHub Copilot? Okay, cool. So a lot of y'all are familiar. I talk to people about this all the time. I'm excited about it. I know a lot of other people are as well. But there's also these nice chatGPT style experiences that we're seeing. Where you can have more of a conversation. Do some more discovery. Maybe push out some prototypes. So there are a lot of cool technologies by both Microsoft and Google and Open AI. So lots of tools in this space. And every day I feel like there's something new.

So yeah, Copilot is the one that I'm most familiar with. It's a really helpful auto-completion tool. So what you do is you prompt it with context and the context is basically where your cursor is in the file that you're working on as well as what other tabs you have open. So it's able to synthesize the best possible suggestion for you. Yeah. Based on what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish.

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