395
AI slows down some experienced software developers, study finds
(www.reuters.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
That's still not actually knowing anything. It's just temporarily adding more context to its model.
And it's always very temporary. I have a yarn project I'm working on right now, and I used Copilot in VS Code in agent mode to scaffold it as an experiment. One of the refinements I included in the prompt file to build it is reminders throughout for things it wouldn't need reminding of if it actually "knew" the repo.
I'm not saying it wasn't helpful. It probably cut 20% off the time it would have taken me to scaffold out the app myself, which is significant. But it certainly couldn't keep track of the context provided by the repo, even though it was creating that context itself.
Working with Copilot is like working with a very talented and fast junior developer whose methamphetamine addiction has been getting the better of it lately, and who has early onset dementia or a brain injury that destroyed their short-term memory.
From the article: "Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%."
I'm not saying you didn't save time, but it's remarkable that the research shows that this perception can be false.
Adding context is “knowing more” for a computer program.
Maybe it’s different in VS code vs regular VS, because I never get issues like what you’re describing in VS. Haven’t really used it in VS Code.
Are you using agent mode?