Get AI code generation tools to create correct Elixir code, or else

The question is: how much boilerplate code do you really write? Elixir compared to other languages has little to none boilerplate, and for moments such as phoenix things, there are configurable generators.

I wouldn’t want an AI incapable of problem solving to generate complex code for me, because as tempting as it seems, the productivity decreases a lot if we talk about refactoring generated code compared to creating your own new code.

Productivity is about solving a problem in the most efficient way, not about generating code the fastest, so I frankly don’t understand this argument.

You are giving both of these tools too much credit.

As @D4no0 mentioned, generating code just so you can get started with task X is not such a huge deal as people make it out to be. Emacs and VIM have had “snippet managers” for decades where you press a particular combo of keys and e.g. get a function with a for-loop over a list written for you.

GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are better in that for sure – but not by much.

98% of all commercial programming is reading, understanding and modifying code. Improving the 2% that are the writing of the initial code is not impressive by any stretch of the imagination.

And finally, having something generate bigger scaffolds for you comes with the severe disadvantage that you might not understand that initial code and then you’ll lose more time first trying to understand it and then actually extending it or even using it on a basic level.

I’m wondering about this. I mean lot of time at least in our company’s software I first have to think about how to implement a feature because it might effect many places in the app. Lot of time is going into design then usually writing the code is just small part of the equation. It’s really hard for me to believe that 50% productivity claim from Copilot. I write TypeScript and I think it support that and maybe I’ll try it out.

Edit: It wasn’t 50% it was close to 30% source: Research: How GitHub Copilot helps improve developer productivity - The GitHub Blog

In my experience Copilot in elixir is pretty good. I’ve even found it to be better with elixir than with typescript.

I agree, it will be mandatory that code can be generated by AI.
The fact that chatGPT is so much better - at a task it is not made for - than copilot lets us guess where Microsoft will go with it in the future. In a few years all code will be written in dialog with a bot, no loc will be entered by hand.

And all progress will halt. Who is going to come up with new ideas then, the chatbot?

In this future I imagine it all eventually converges and every app ends up becoming a to-do app, styled using bootstrap, of course.

You’ll still have to think (for a while) and tell the bot what to do, what you want.

They… Really aren’t. After two weeks of running Copilot on a JS codebase

• it managed to suggest autocompletion maybe 5% of the time
• maybe another 5% of the time it was actually useful or correct

All other cases IDEA’s autocompletion was better, and actually correct.

Both Copilot and ChatGPT are barely competent for the smallest and easiest of use cases. For the absolute vast majority of cases it’s a junior developer misunderstanding the assignment and spitting out some code that you have to thoroughly review to catch all the mistakes.

Don’t mistake raving reviews on Youtube/Twitter that are result of an early honeymoon period for actual usability of the products.

If you don’t want to work in a circus, don’t work for clowns.

For what tbh, AI code generation is currently garbage technology. You also mentioned ChatGPT as code generation AI / tool. It’s not. It’s a text generation AI and nothing else. Use correct tool for correct job and try not believing in stupid marketing phrases