Why one developer disabled and deleted CoPilot: The productivity paradox of AI coding assistants
By
Bogdanp
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Summary
The author describes their experience using GitHub CoPilot and JetBrains' local AI completions for IntelliJ over several years. Initially enthusiastic, they ultimately disabled and deleted both tools, finding it improved their productivity and reduced frustration. The article argues that while CoPilot excels at speeding up already-fast monotonous code transformations (like mapping objects to SQL), this benefit is outweighed by drawbacks such as context disruption, over-reliance, and the cognitive cost of verifying AI-generated suggestions.
Key quotes
· 2 pulledI've come to first disable it and then delete it altogether along with JetBrains' local AI-completions, and generally felt this has been an improvement in productivity and a reduction of frustration.
CoPilot is pretty good at taking things that are already pretty fast, such as monotonous code transformations like mapping an object to a SQL statement, and then making that even faster.
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