The way I write code hasn’t really changed that much since my early days as a J2EE developer. Patterns I established then are still pretty close to what I use today (in the limited time I am still in the code).
Languages, frameworks, tools, testing approaches, and IDEs have all turned over many times during my career, but if you throw all that out my core workflow in 2023 would look very much the same as it did in 2003.
That is, until we adopted Github Copilot and other GenAI tools at Gain Compliance this year. Copilot has fundamentally changed the way I write code for the first time in probably 20 years.
The speedup in auto-filled code matching your intention is so valuable, I find myself optimizing for getting what I want from the GPT.
At worst it can type faster than me. Often it will arrive at a solution that I would have to research to use. Also often it arrives at a solution that I would never have come up with on my own. At its best it is completing your thoughts.
Honestly the DX is still pretty rough, but I think Github will get there quickly. If they don’t, someone else will. Github has pointed towards a model that deeply understands your code base, and can be customized to your preferences. OpenAI’s GPTs are also a step in this direction.
If you haven’t tried one of these tools yet in your software development process you really owe it to yourself to do so. Your competitors already are.
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