Master Coding Faster with GitHub Copilot

Background: I have been part of the technology industry for over 20 years. My journey includes more than 10 years of .NET coding experience, followed by roles in management, where I led teams and drove technological innovations. As the technology industry embraces the new wave of Generative AI and increasing popularity of AI pair-programming tool, I recently decided to explore GitHub Copilot, an AI pair-programming tool, and completed a training course on Udemy. This course primarily focused on programming in Java and Spring Boot using GitHub Copilot. Within the first hour of my training, I grasped the utility of GitHub Copilot in conjunction with Visual Studio Code. Midway through the course, I decided to apply my learnings by developing an HTML and JavaScript-based website.

The website offers distinctive desktop wallpapers and backgrounds for Windows users, with wallpaper images generated using DALL-E, an AI program. Thus, I embarked on an innovative project to create https://wally123.com, a streamlined, single-page website. Utilizing GitHub Copilot, I could successfully build and deploy the website in just 8 hours, demonstrating the remarkable efficiency of AI-assisted programming in accelerating web development tasks. It took me approximately 3 hours to program the website, with the remaining time spent on purchasing a domain and hosting plan, generating roughly 20 images using DALL-E, and deploying the website.

GitHub Copilot's role in this development process was pivotal. It offers more than just code completion; it acts as an intelligent assistant, suggesting whole lines or blocks of code based on the project's context. This enables it to anticipate coding needs, recommend best practices, and even suggest alternative problem-solving approaches. For instance, when I needed to implement a feature for dynamically displaying the AI-generated wallpapers, Copilot provided snippets with well-explained comments that seamlessly integrated JavaScript with the HTML structure, significantly reducing complexity and coding time. Additionally, the Copilot Chat feature can assist in fixing bugs, explaining code, testing code, and more.

GitHub Copilot’s ability to interpret comments and convert them into code proposals also enhanced the development workflow. By simply describing a functionality in plain English within a comment, Copilot would propose relevant code, enabling rapid iteration on new ideas and features without getting bogged down in syntax details.

- Click here to check the source code of the website

In conclusion, Copilot can significantly improve developer productivity and efficiency, aid in debugging, explain complex code, generate unit test cases, and perform many more complex tasks as an AI pair-programming tool.

- Click here to read research conducted on productivity improvement with the help of GitHub Copilot