HACKER Q&A
📣 ronbenton

Is there a true AI pair programmer yet?


I've seen Github Copilot marketed as "AI pair programmer" but it just feels like smart autocomplete to me. What I would be really interested is a true pair programming experience: writing code, getting verbal questions/suggestions from my AI pair, and asking its thoughts on approaches to problems. Is anyone making this yet?


  👤 proc0 Accepted Answer ✓
Yeah it's not there yet. It's definitely overhyped. The main reason is that it can't do any kind of complex task yet. The evidence is all of the examples that people showcase. If you are going to showcase the abilities of AI, and it is as easy as entering a prompt, you would think we would see all kinds of crazy examples like "create a github clone", or "make full online store app". Maybe not in one prompt, but certainly one prompt for every domain, like one for front end, one for back end, one for the DB setup, and in a few steps you have a fully working website, SaaS, or what have you, but instead we're seeing snake games, bouncing balls, interview questions and small problems. \

It's impressive in its own right, but the value of AI coding is entirely in its ability to solve interesting problems, not to mention that it needs to also be reliable otherwise you still need expertise to fix the mistakes.