To make us better, not obsolete
What if AI can be used to make us better at what we do, instead of obsolete like so many fear?
I've started noticing exactly that occurring with my use of Copilot in day-to-day work. I use comments very sparingly so those are rarely useful hints to the AI about what I want to come next.
But it turns out that improving your variable names, by making them more-descriptive, is often enough of a hint!
Here's an actual example from earlier today; I started by writing:
const dataJsonSizeMb
and already, dear reader, you have a pretty good idea of what code you'd write next I imagine. Well, lo and behold, Copilot had the same though based only on the variable name and filled in the rest perfectly:
= fs.statSync(dataPath).size / 1024 / 1024;
Continued successes like this will reinforce in my own mind the value of extremely-descriptive variable naming, which let's be honest, is never a bad thing in the first place.
So TL;DR: Copilot is causing me to improve my instinctual writing style.
Maybe we're not entirely doomed after all?