GitHub copilot: artificial intelligence at the service of your applications
This is not the first time you’ll read about Artificial Intelligence, nor will it be the last. In recent years, more and more computer systems use some AI mechanism to, in short, make our lives easier. Even the simplest tools can offer you better services thanks to it.
An example of this is what we could call “autocomplete”
Do I need an AI during my development?
A very important question. For our part, we are very sure that most of the time that a developer has raised it, the answer is always yes.
After all, and as we have mentioned, Artificial Intelligence is very present in our lives, helping us to make better decisions. This also applies, of course, to our work environment.
When we want to install new functionality in our applications, we have to spend hours writing functions/APIs/models, and we run into the typical problems of the development world. From then on, we have no choice but to investigate the problem, look for references in similar problems, or use external libraries.
As you can imagine, this supposes a significant loss of time and muscle of work, and the results may not be the desired ones since what works for an external entity, may not work for us. That is why it is important to explore tools that unify these processes or eliminate them completely.
What is GitHub?
In our previous article, we discussed how you can find commands on GitHub to help you automate processes within Microsoft Office.
If you don’t know GitHub yet, we’ll quickly explain it to you. As the main idea, GitHub is the most important software hosting website on the Internet at the moment, with more than 70 million developers and 4 million organizations in its system.
But what makes GitHub special is the sense of community it brings to programming. Around your code, you can create a group of collaborators to work on the same code, give you suggestions and feedback, or use it in the future. In the business section, giants like Spotify or Ford rely on GitHub to host their business solutions.
Following this plan, GitHub continues to explore capabilities to compete against other providers and further encourage the participation of all members of a team. And GitHub Copilot may help them (a lot) to differentiate themselves from the rest.
How does GitHub Copilot work?
In short, Copilot is a programmer AI designed to help you write code faster and with less work (so GitHub puts it on its page). How? Copilot learns from you and your code, suggesting lines, or even entire functions, on the fly. You will be able to edit and correct your proposal where you see it necessary, saving a lot of time writing the simplest parts of the program.
It should be clarified that Copilot is still in the “Technical Preview” phase. Consider him a partner, a co-driver (pun intended), not a substitute for a professional development team. Copilot will learn thanks to Machine Learning and will improve when it comes to understanding our needs in the future.
According to GitHub, about a third of the new code published on its website uses Copilot at some point, and the company hopes that it will soon be able to recognize all the most popular programming languages.
GitHub Copilot A fantastic tool for your developers
If you use GitHub in any extension (either by yourself or with a team of experts), we recommend installing Copilot. It is a fantastic helper to speed up the code writing processes in your teams and it will give you a better image in front of your clients, who will only notice a faster time to start working with the tools you provide them.
You can sign up for the Copilot preview here.