Why I Quit Copilot | Prime Reacts 

The reason I quit copilot is my 30 day trial ran out.

Every Neovim user reconfigures their setup once in a while, just as soldiers sharpen their swords.

I thought we memorized stuff because its faster when its in L1 cache compared to checking the internet.

Memorization can be scary though. Depends on your job and how technical it is. I was in munitions systems in the Air Force. We were taught to not rely on imperfect human memory and follow the documentation every time, regardless. I argue that co-pilot is bad because it gives you the fallacy that you do have everything memorized because we just glance at it and agree with copilot. It’s like saying oh that’s easy, I remember that.

I still remember how fun it was to code without internet access. You had access to high-quality documentation locally installed on your computer. During that era, I read probably half of unix manpages and GNU info doc. It was a very, very productive and pleasant way of working.

I quit using Copilot a few months ago because it was fucking annoying. Terrible, intrusive suggestions that would override the IDE's default suggestions and prevented me from inserting basic snippets because it thought it knew what I wanted.

I never use copilot to write my main logic. I mainly use copilot to autocomplete boilerplate and tests. As much as I love coding, I always hate writing that part. I just like using AI to allow me to focus more on the main logic that I want to actually write.

Privacy/telemetry/leaking is a significant issue in a lot of industries. For example I work on a semiconductor manufacturing related project that is dealing with High-NA EUV lithography - it's forbidden to send data to any external service, including google translate. But I bet it's the same in car manufacturing, aerospace, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, etc. (Although I personally don't mind, since I like to write my own code, and usually structural/architectural design is the hard part, not typing it out.)

Students using co-pilot is like using an ORM while barely knowing anything about SQL, or what an ORM even does

The only reason i still use Copilot is for documentation generation and method naming. Nothing better to start a doc block and get the generated text in a second instead of manually typing it in. Also, after some time it will start following your doc style, so it really shaves up to 30-40% of your time doing documentation. As for coding, i dont even ask it to suggest what it wants me to write, most of the time it is either clueless, or just gives stuff which is completely out of context of what i need (even with the method names which explain the designation of the method completely)

Literally, my job blocked Copilot on the firewall and I didn’t even realize for a minute so I decided it was time to save $10 a month

The first reason I don''t use copilot because I don't yet believe they are out of the woods with the copyright issues coming their way. When copilot copies in something which is to similar to the original and the original author isn't credited or the original license isn't compatible with your project, what then ?

"If you find yourself frustrated from -writing- code, I think you are a bad programmer" Gotta say, I agree with this statement. EVERY TIME I have found myself frustrated while writing code, it was because of some inadequacy in myself. Either I didn't know how to use some data structure, or I didn't know how to solve some common code problem, or I didn't understand the math to solve a problem. And EVERY TIME I have solved this frustration by learning more. Furthermore, I agree with his take on Copilot because Copilot "solves" these problems for people by removing that knowledge requirement from the developer. Bad programmers feel less frustrated with it because it's doing that work for them. The problem is, they have no way of knowing if it's done a good job or not. It doesn't make them better programmers, it just makes them more comfortable being bad programmers.

You lost me at "I decided to redo my neovim config from scratch"

I use it for my job, and unfortunately 9 out 10 suggestions are either wrong or completely out of context. Its mildly good at creating methods name, however its quite terrible on other aspects. I'm not sure where the 55% speed increase comes from in their ads since it didn't really increase my productivity by a noticeable margin.

I also had a big pause on guitar. Probably like 5 years, but what i gladly find out was that guitar is on the bike side of things. You really get up to speed faster than you think, you find a new enjoyment (specially with a new guitar, that feeling is awesome) and the most surprising side, you actually improve on some stuff because of the pause.

This was interesting. Especially the “copilot pause”. I think I’ll turn off automatic suggestions so I have to prompt for a suggestion specifically when I want one.

I tried something similar called Codeium AI. The initial adrenalin rush was awesome. It was like this thing just reads my mind and typed it super fast. But the longer I used it, the more it felt like a crutch. After every block I had to ask myself. "Is that OK?", "Would I have written that this way", "What is that code even doing?". It took away the focus from what I write, to how it was written, and thus the AI started to slow me down. I think I prefere a good LSP + Some Documentation on a second monitor. It's a good tool for writing Boilerplate no doubt, but if you have written that Boilerplate 100s of times, why not just have a version of it ready for Copy and Paste, or a Code-Snippet/Template.

The best part of copilot is querying docs without having to leave the IDE. copilot chat: "posgres partial index with nullable column".

I'm kinda the same, I've been avoiding all generative AI in general. It's not that I don't recognize their usefulness, rather I think I'm afraid of not understanding the content in produces and also the copyright issues when it comes to media generation is scary. I love to backwards engineer code by learning a framework or a system and then building on top of that, rather than asking a robot to do it for me.

31:30 Copilot can parse your entire workspace on VScode. So if your whole GitHub repo is in your working directory it can parse it. Copilot wouldn’t need to parse your repo one single pass, but chunk by chunk. Is if it were a conversion. Context size is an issue, but with Claude reaching 1 million token context, Copilot in the future should get it.

Microsoft would be thrilled to make all of us completely addicted to their paid service, and to habituate the new generation of software developers as early as possible to think that using Copilot is as normal as breathing air. The consequences? It's not their problem, at least not for a good while.

I've had my copilot enable/disable to "ce" and "cd" maps for quite a while now, and ironically, I hardly ever use copilot since it's not on by default. I just don't find myself actually needing it all too much.

I use copilot at work so I can be max productive but on my own personal work I don’t use it so I can focus more on learning. When using it at work though I don’t really use it for stuff I don’t know how to do, instead, I use it to repeat patterns that already exist in my code base or for boilerplate. For example, if I’ve already written a GET /foo endpoint myself, copilot can generate all the code I need for my GET /bar endpoint because it will follow the patterns of my codebase. I agree it’s terrible for students and the pause effect is real. That being said, you can ignore its suggestions, you don’t have to take them.

28:00 So, with Copilot it's easier to generate the commonly junk coverage unit tests which confirm that the implementation details are implemented the way they are implemented? :P

The most frustrating stuff are c memory bugs. Race conditions python enviorment issues.

Very interesting. Every month I see the payment passing by on my bank account and every time I think “do I really need this?”. Good take on disabling and see if you really need it. 💪🏻👍🏻

NGL, the only thing I didn't like about programming in my Highschool level Comp Sci course was debugging C++ in 2004! Then I hated not knowing how to do more programming without spending an arm and two legs, because it was 2004! That said, bashing my head against all available surfaces to debug C++ in 2004 is PROBABLY why I never REALLY struggled at programming ever since! Like the intro to true OOP was a stumbling point and stuff that most devs DON'T do, such as building my own DB on an ARM64 Linux device kinda hurts, but it's all trivial compared to debugging C++ in 2004!

Already saw this video, but re-watching for ThePrimeTime

Prime saying exactly what I'm thinking, who thought it's a good idea to give it to students?

I've learned so much since I started using Copilot. It all depends on how much you know when you start using it and how you use it when you do.

The part about learning how to type well is so true, I started out coding and after just two weeks in my course my hands were wrecked. I got a ortholinear split keyboard and also decided to swap layout to Dvorak, it was so annoying the first week but now I’m starting to fly in typing and errors is down. My pain is gone and I can fully focus on just learning to code. Also love/hate C but understanding memory is crucial, also decided to read books on how it all works down to the resistor. I really love this field.

Until his later years, Einstein had that look of grey hair while is mustache was still darker.

"I wish there is a privacy-concerned version of Microsoft." Sir, this is Microsoft.

0:16 Are you using any ad blocker extensions? I experienced similar issues while using RU-vid. It seemed like RU-vid ads and the ad blocker were at war with each other, causing the hanging problem I encountered.

The main thing I use it for is the boilerplate, and if you set it up smart then you can really be efficient in that regard. Things like rather than being the first thing in the tab list to use I would have a different key. I guess I wish I could specify how copilot works and what kind of code it brafs out.

English is not my first language, altough I'm fluent and understand everything, sometimes when I'm concentrated, I cant remember the simpliest words. So I use copilot to help me name variables and functions.

Doesn't need your whole codebase for privacy to be an issue. Does it know not to ingest your .env?

I see your point. Although I have had Copilot for more than a year, I have only started to really use it in the past six months. I found it particularly helpful in rewriting code. Say I write one-off code to see if it works, then I ask Copilo to write generalized code; it does it fast. It takes away research time, especially if you are working on a job with a budget and timeline. After watching this video, you make a good point, I will disable it between projects, and as I work on learning new tech, I'll force myself to answer my questions.

I don't mind writing code in general, but what I often get apprehensive about is writing a lot of complex test cases where it's like, ok now if the customer already has the item in their cart and they are a rewards member and they have a coupon but it's not their birthday... Ok now all of that but it's their birthday, ok now all of that, but the coupon can apply to two things in their cart... And you have to set up test data for the cart, the products, the cart entries, the user, the loyalty membership, the coupon code, the coupon satisfaction criteria... You have to do all those things, and all the acceptance criteria says is, "as a customer, when I check out, any coupons should apply based on the products in my basket" but you talked to the product owner, and they mentioned the thing about loyalty programs in passing, and you remember that the birthday case was brought up during refinement, but the scrum master forgot to add it to the story.

That TikTok/Instagram learned helplessness thing is so real, I see so much shit not just with copilot, but with a bunch of high school students complaining about teachers punishing the use of AI, like they don’t comprehend that they’re at school to learn, not sit on your phone for 6 hours, I remember once I was talking in a comment about how using AI to do your work is stupid and a waste of your own time, but I could rationalize it, but doing the same thing in college, was completely stupid and inherently irrational. Because you pay to go to college and are learning things you will need to use in your career, acting like a high schooler and trying to avoid learning at all costs is completely stupid. Seems like a valid take, maybe a bit extreme on the anti-AI side but I was getting flamed by a bunch of high schoolers in the comments who were acting like school is this horrible struggle where they’re being mentally tormented all day or that school is this horrible abusive system that preys on their free time to teach them useless things. The problem with those platforms is they’re mostly teenagers, and young people (regardless of generation) are the most likely to fall into a reliance on technology and tools, and while I don’t think it necessarily makes them lazier, it does take away the necessity for them to learn and use skills, thus they become hyper reliant on it, and once they don’t have it, they become useless. Imagine having someone learn on a Tesla, always having autopilot and loads of sensors, backup cameras, GPS, everything, and taking them, and throwing them in a 1997 Ford Taurus, with none of that. 9 times out of 10 they fall apart and don’t know how to do anything. It’s the same with modern AI and tools being used by developers and students. That’s why it’s such a dumb idea for schools to allow AI, because it would ruin the ability for a generation of kids to do anything on their own.

The main issue why people quit Copilot is that they were using it as their main pilot to write code. If you use Copilot as a copilot or assistent for writing code, you can still learn new stuff, be creative and solve your problems on your own style.

What I want to know is: How many people **at** Microsoft use Copilot voluntarily? Especially Interns.

I have to sheepishly admit that Copilot is very helpful as an EM that maybe submits 2-3 PRs per month. Because I haven’t been an engineer in about 8 years, I find that I still have the ability to formulate the business logic I want to implement but not necessarily a grasp of the exact syntax for how to express it (especially managing a team with a different tech stack than when I coded regularly 40+ hours per week). Copilot is good at short circuiting that frustration and usually at least givens me a decent landing spot for where to explore the docs to write a refactor of Copilot’s code or my own novel replacement of Copilot’s suggestion.

It sucks bad more of the time confuses me about my own code when attempting to fix an error and the fact that it can't process some amounts of code made it kinda wack

Also not using Copilot. Don't want to become dependent on it. Yeah, perhaps my productivity takes a hit, but I think it's worth the tradeoff.

Autocomplete of .length may be useful though. Probably not for the majority, but I'm dealing with 6 or so different languages all the time and really appreciate that copilot uses the right version of len/length/size/count/Length/whatever in a given context.

31:00 As far as I know it, VS Code sends *currently open* files as context for the copilot. I consider it a nice way to guide Copilot because I can open related files and Copilot will only suggest related lines of code.

i actually do realize the copilot pause, i'm doing it on purpose i don't have the problem of pausing to wait for a suggestion, i only pause when i know the suggestion will be good

Copilot for me is analogous to digital music workstations (Flstudio,ableton) for a musician that plays an instrument whole life. Basically it allows you to have codewriting/musicplaying power of a team/band, you even have random noise generators, but in the end you have to do the thinking and arrange the song/program. But using copilot/dwm makes you rusty in what was once normal for you, playing instrument, or writing code directly.

Hey prime it can also be an issue even when writing open source as some people could later get an answer from copilot that used your code snippet but using for a closed source project and not respecting your original licensing. It already happened as I saw some guy tweet about it a few months ago.

I've noticed the wait-for-copilot thing as well. Then I started to use it only when I know that I'll need to write a lot of boilerplate code, otherwise I just write code myself.

Have never used co pilot, or chat gpt directly. Will be like that dude with the plasticine models and the stop motion animation in a world of cgi, holla me if you like Wallace and Gromit.

I don't think the only people Copilot improved the coding experience of are the people who can't code. I've been programming for a long time and really like Copilot, especially for auto-completion of repetitive and simple chunks of code.

Using copilot with auto-complete off, and just referring to it when you want it to write out a bunch of boiler plate (using the shortcuts to quickly feed it a highlighted bit of code), or offer some suggestions on how to tackle a problem when you are considering how to proceed (basically, standing in for Stack Overflow / Doc Snippets), is the best way to get good value from it without it becoming a crutch. Still find myself having to refer to the docs regularly though as it often suggests non-optimal approaches. Should add, I am coding in C# in Visual Studio, which I think is a superior experience to the VS Code / JS code I've seen - probably due to the typing of C# and it being a Microsoft tool, so presumably they have fed it a lot of proprietary C# they own.

I haven't used copilot, but that beginning is very much my take on IDEs. I started with one and felt like I couldn't work without, but shortly after being forced into using vi for a month I was so much faster and was learning faster. Now someone with 5+ years experience but needs an IDE is a strong sign of a subpar dev. On the occasion I'm forced to use one, it is nothing but headaches.

I'll go against the crowd and support copilot. I love it for the sole fact that it already knows about most the libraries I end up using. I can see what it produces and learn how to use the library from that. I never straight up trust whatever it makes, alwasy reviewing everything it generates. But man, there are so many times I love tab`ing a bunch of boilerplate away, or writing and entire unit test with just a sentence. The only real problem with using copilot is when you start relying on it. As soon as you "need" it to write everyday code, you gotta take a break from it.

I use copilot lightly as of recently, I work mostly in python and we typehint pretty much anything, most of the suggestions are not great but when you need to do a bunch of repetitive stuff it can be nice. Like when you are writing tests if you specify a case it will often extrapolate the right completion and save you some typing. Or when you are documenting since it's essentially a language model on a trenchcoat it's pretty good at autocompleting English language.

I enjoyed the first weeks of programming. I had a knack for it, and learned everything pre-ai. I tend to not pause for copilot. It's just nice when I'm writing predictable code and it pops up. I just write code the same way, but it does write a couple lines here and there. I'm with you on I need to get it out as fast as possible. I don't feel like I'm losing anything to ai because I had a job that forbade ai and wrote some of the best code in my life there without gpt and copilot.

he's a neovim user so there's a big chance he's also writing emails, personal notes, etc. in it too. if you leave copilot on by default privacy is a bigger concern there. i also don't really care about "privacy" with my code as im likely to make it public if it's personal, and if it's for work it's ending up on github anyway

Industry doesn’t care about how fun or fulfilling the developer felt writing code. They just want to get things done quick and cheap. All this ‘copilot sucks’ rant is the coping mechanism for I know all types senior devs The code generation is at its infancy stage right now. It won’t be long before it gets efficient

Man I miss side projects. I used to go a ton of microcontroller programming work at my job. Entire department is at a stand still right now, and I haven't had any main projects to work on, so the tangents that pop up and inspire the side projects just haven't been there. feels bad man

Prime's advice is great long term, and I think that's really where the conflict is - if you follow Prime's advice then in 10 years you'll be a fantastic programmer, but there's a lot of developers that find themselves in a situation where they need to get something done right now. Product managers don't really like to hear "Yeah so we missed the deadline for this feature because I turned off my LSP and exposed my major skill issues, it will be worth it in a few years though" I think there's some kind of compromise like using copilot for work tasks, and not using copilot for personal projects that might work, depending of course on how many personal projects you do.

Whoever commented "$10 a month ain't a loss" should know that keeping AI like copilot running requires almost $10 million a day and thousands of metric tons of water for cooling PER DAY and that's just for server upkeep. Copilot being $10 a month is ABSOLUTELY a loss leader.

Is this the signs of sunsetting purists? Knowing how to synchronize carburator is no longer relevant. Certain skills just become irrelevant. Coding is clearly headed that way. The market manipulators don't care about purist "coding" skill, just throughput and profit. Quality is dead AF. Have you seen the AI garbage fools are flocking to, regardless of the pathetic quality. Generated art and text is mediocre at best.

I'm aware of Copilot pause, too. I'm trying to game myself the other way around: I try to write code fast enough to never see a Copilot suggestion but if I stall for long enough, let the Copilot suggest something to get out of the stall. My computer has wired FTTH internet connection so the pause needed isn't that long but I still try to write new code fast enough to never see Copilot suggestions.

Lol i watched the source video earlier today and now im watching the reaction. This is a first for me

I don't know how people can watch this guy. Every video of his I've clicked on has been full of terrible takes, reeking of know-it-all elitism. One of the most damaging things a newer engineer can do isn't using Copilot, it's watching these videos.

I think that if you wish to use copilot, the most important habit to have is if the AI suggests some code that you either don’t understand why it works or wouldn’t have done yourself, that you take the time to research that bit of code and what it does etc. the worst thing to do is allow yourself to use code that you don’t understand.

I've never used Copilot, but I do like when my IDE has some amount of user-controlled autocomplete, either because of a full LSP implementation or because of basic string tokenization like how most Scintilla-based or other similar syntax highlighting text editors do. Works wonders for annoying boilerplate stuff like function parameters, but I definitely don't like intrusive stuff that assumes what I want and acts like it knows how to code what I want to do better than I do.

I was the lead on a project that was HEAVY on node events. I struggled WAY too much to debug events-based bugs and memory leaks until I read the docs on the library and it was like I leveled up like 10 levels by simply reading the docs. I feel like people avoid reading the docs just because they are only using a few methods of a library. This is a mistake.

Honestly, I think that engaging in open source and wanting privacy go hand in hand. When you share something that's open source, yes, you share it with the world, but you're deciding what and how much to share. When you use something that's open source, you're also controlling how much to share, and doing so with more confidence.

I always understand what I'm doing, only recently I've been using copilot, and for me copilot is just a tool to write boilerplate code which saves me time, and anyway I always check the code and can tell if it's wrong or if it is the way I wanted it to be written. I don't think it's a bad thing to use it and keep checking on what's being written, but I agree at some degree that new people learning programming can be affected by this.

YES. Your take on why the "self-reported satisfaction" numbers are inflated or a poor measure of copilot's benefits is what I've been trying to express for so long.

I had experience that copilot pause too at some point. the way I intend to prevent that pause while still using copilot is to type it out the code that I wanted to type even if copilot already suggested the recommended code instead of let copilot auto complete. A lot of the time I ignored the suggestion as well even if the code I type is the same as the suggestion.

I tried copilot a few months back during my second month of working as a programmer. I was actually astonished by it's capabilities, because at the time, I set up some types and variables which I needed to "reverse engineer" a json tree structure of product categories out of a list of all products which obtained their path through the categories. To my astonishment, at the moment I began to write that code, copilot no joke wrote like 20-30 lines of code and it did exactly what I needed it to do. It's even cooler because at the time, I had no idea how I would accomplish that and copilot was like "no worries lil bro I got you" :d

I checked the traffic it sends from my VS Code and yes, it uses mostly the current file + a few related functions from other files. But it can definitely remember what it saw earlier on their server.

The start was priceless (fullscreen). "Computers are some times drunk." 😂

I think Copilot meshes with me better simply because I already had a pause in the first place. I never stop when I have code in mind, but often, I have an idea in mind I have yet to convert to code, so I pause when thinking about how I'm going to do the implementation. While programming language and actual languages are different, I think the best explanation would use that analogy. I'm bilingual, and when I think, I'm not necessarily thinking in one language. I'm just *thinking*. Similarly, when I'm programming, I'm not thinking in any programming language, I just have a structure and logic in my head that I have yet to translate. But I've noticed an added pause with some things still (for loops was the most noticeable), it's just that it stood out less to me because I already had some, and I guess my style of programming just meshed better with it. I might be a special case, though, because while I don't have professional experience, I've been programming for 14 years, so I'm a weird kind of junior who learned both by themselves and from experienced devs, and now a tad from uni, though it's really basic.

Thanks for being direct and saying that loud: copilot improved satisfaction to whose who were bad in programming in a first place. ❤

"learned helplessness" - I love that phrase, and will now use it for everything

I am a CS student and got copilot for the first time in January I think. Going in I found the completion incredibly annoying. I left it on for about a week, and I'm not going to lie; the fact that sometimes it is so accurate to predict really simple functions is amazing. However, it feels too intrusive for me. I'm still signed in case I need it, but I rarely use it now, and it's been only three months lol.

What about writing private data, where even if you SOPs it afterwords or before committing it? I know I've been in that circumstance so I could see it being accidentally embeded into copilot for others to try and extract.

i have used the built in windows version, to get a refresher on programming syntax if i get stuck or a question about something. I dont want it to make programs for me though. I use it more of a learning tool then a replacement to do the work. It is nice to ask a question about something and get info.

Nice! I can just put "started programming around 15BC" in my bio, and it'll never need updating.

I use copilot but I’ve always regularly cycled it on and off, either entirely or for specific file types. Especially when learning something new, I’ll turn it off for a few days, then turn it back on to see suggestions vs what I learned

i wonder how viable having copilot suggestions appear only after pressing a mapping would be? if you knew you need some boilerplate for tests etc. you could just hit the key combo and let copilot do the job, without it disrupting your normal workflow. idk tho, maybe i will test that in the future

On the strange RU-vid fullscreen problem you experienced early on: I get that quite often, typically if I go fullscreen while it still loads some parts of the page. I think it's just a RU-vid bug.

The copilot autocomplete I wouldn't mind turning off more. Instead I am kind of liking the inline copilot feature in vscode where I can just prompt it what I want it to change and then review/reject what it gives me (or have it retry). Here I feel less on the leash of copilot and I am using it more like a co-programmer when I need a second input on some problem. Agree too it is still a helpful tool for any boiler plate.

I love this term: "Copilot pause". Nowadays, I'm thinking about as a Dev|Sec|(little)Ops I have to rely on too many techs. And I've noticed this pause not just in my coding but even in my speech. This is terrifying.

I use gemini to write code, and even though it sucks at coding, I love doing it, cause that ai feels like a human that tries to learn too(which it actually does), and while trying its approaches, I learn my approaches that are better than it's are, after that I share with it, it gives me pretty human reaction, and it feels like I work in a team, not alone! A cozy feeling, though I know that that's not true 😊

I bought so much books to just have the documentation. I’m glad this times are over. But I did really know my stuff from the time where I needed to read and search physical docs

It can use your entire code base. it uses code ql to send datasets at this size. Now that is with copilot chat and not sure on inline recommendations.

I just start to use Copilot, Copilot is quite useful for experience developer. Since it can save some times when it suggest the code that I wanna to write , especially for HTML / UI. For the Junior Developer , it may be a trouble for them, they are already not familiar with the coding and they trust what copilot suggested. It may make more trouble for them.

I really agree just in one point - waiting when copilot autocomplit my sentence, it's not good, but usefulness in boilerplates, I can't deny

Need it for fast types. Ollama and one of the vscode plugins does a good look alike for m1 or GPUs if you have some power supply.

14:13 I remember when I was 1-2 years in and I was looking up everything. There was an internet outage and I was no longer a programmer. That's when I learned I had to actually learn stuff.

The "Copilot pause" is something I experience when using an LSP (particularly TS' because it's so slow, but also Rust's). Makes me wonder if I should try foregoing an LSP for awhile.

I don't know if it's the same with copilot since I don't use it and I never have, but as a java developer I tried intellij AI for some time and ended up disabling it... I feel like it gets in the way in the sense that it suggests code that will take more of my attention to check if it makes sense and at the same time I feel that if a bug gets introduced by it it'll take me a lot longer to figure it out...

I prefer to use only the chat for generating boilerplate or json objects than the autocompletion. Or use another llm running in ollama (deepseek coder) for that same purpose.