My Week With GitHub Copilot: AI Pair Programming Review

Before text and code editors, developers were tasked with having the correct code passed to a compiler. Now, support tools like syntax highlighting, function syntax assistance, autolinting, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance are available directly in your Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or the editor where you code. 

With these tools, developers can focus on building great software and spend less time completing tedious tasks or combing through code to discover minor errors. For example, ubiquitous code highlighting reminds developers to finish their strings. There’s no need to keep a programming language reference open in a browser tab now that developers can start the function name and the syntax parameter will pop up. If developers forget to close a bracket, the code formatting tool Prettier triggers a reminder to enforce a consistent code style. For those who use tabs or spaces for indentation, now whatever is set up on a project is automatically applied when the file is saved. Overall, these tools help developers reduce errors and improve the quality of their code.

Now, there’s a tool that promises to improve the developer experience even more: GithHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer. After a year of closed beta, GitHub Copilot is now publicly available to developers and is gaining a lot of attention for its ability to enable developers to harness AI while writing code. According to GitHub, developers can write a comment describing the logic they want and GitHub Copilot will automatically generate a code suggestion for their solution. It sounds pretty cool, right? Our team thought so, but we had some questions, for instance: 

• Does GitHub Copilot really speed up daily work?
• Are the suggestions valid, or just noise for the developer?
• Is it worth a freelance developer paying for it? 
• Is it worth companies paying for it for their team members?
• Does it make you less of a developer if you use a tool like this?

OK, that last one might be a bit philosophical, but the others felt testable. So, to get some answers, I put GitHub Copilot to the test. In this article, I’ll share my experience after one week using the tool and dive into key findings from this trial period. I’ll also use my 20+ years of experience as a Senior Full-Stack Developer to compare it with my day-to-day before Copilot. Hopefully, my experience will give other developers a better understanding of how this tool works and if it lives up to the hype.

What Is GitHub Copilot?

To understand how Copilot came to be, it’s first important to understand pair programming.  

Pair programming is an extreme programming technique where two developers work together on one computer, one acting as the pilot and the other the copilot. The pilot is on the keyboard while the copilot helps navigate, checking the logic and patterns, while weighing against alternative solutions. While two developers producing one piece of code sounds expensive, the quality of the final work can help avoid added costs of code review and QA. 

It was from this idea that AI pair programming came to life. Officially launched in June 2022, GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programming editor that suggests code in real time to help developers work faster and more efficiently. It’s powered by a new AI system, OpenAI Codex, and translates natural language to coding prompts as developers write a comment or a line of code. While it’s free for students, it’s $10/month or $100/year for developers (with a 60-day trial).