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6 Reasons Why You Should Avoid GitHub Copilot and “Fly Solo” Instead
I wouldn’t recommend using it
“Your AI pair programmer.” Get suggestions on what you can code, and even entire function bodies are generated just from what you have entered as a function header.
At first, your opinion might be “Wow, that's amazing! Next-level coding is finally here.”
And I have to admit: At first, I was also amazed by this tool.
But looking behind the scenes was similar to unfolding a conspiracy theory. I dug into the way it works, read the FAQ, and found more and more that suggests this is not a good tool.
How It Works
Skip this if you are already familiar with GitHub Copilot.
So GitHub Copilot gets suggestions for lines of code or entire functions. This is done directly in your editor.
How does it work? Where do the suggestions come from?
“Trained on billions of lines of public code, GitHub Copilot puts the knowledge you need at your fingertips, saving you time and helping you stay focused.” — GitHub Copilot
And this is where the trouble begins…
1. Open Source Licenses Get Disrespected
Since the code comes from a trained AI and the training sets come from code pushed to GitHub, it is either your private code or from open source projects.
If the latter is the case, this is more reasonable since open source code should perform better than your private projects, leading to a higher rate of choosing them as a possible solution.
If GHCP now uses these pieces, the usage will definitely violate the source license.
