Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub: The Time Has Come!

Doesn't really matter. According to its own FAQ (and not just according to common sense), Copilot output code should be “rigorously tested”, “reviewed and vetted”, and “checked for security vulnerabilities”. (The Copilot FAQ also says that Copilot's output “may contain insecure coding patterns, bugs, or references to outdated APIs or idioms” and that it “may not always work, or even make sense”. Yep. Sounds just what we need. Bring it on.)

As a programmer I probably spend more time writing tests for my code and ensuring that it does what it is supposed to do than I do to come up with the code in the first place; if I need to write the tests and debug the code, anyway, then having to write it first is really the least of my worries, and if I write the code myself then at least copyright is much less likely to be an issue. Also, writing the code from scratch will probably be more creative and fun than having to bang dubious Copilot output into shape if it contains “insecure coding patterns” or “references to outdated APIs”, let alone subtle errors that render it inappropriate for the actual use case at hand.

// Math.isPrime(int) returns whether the given number is prime or not
@Test

// Math.isPrime(int) returns whether the given number is prime or not
@Test
public void testIsPrime() {
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(2));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(3));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(5));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(7));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(11));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(13));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(17));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(19));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(23));
  assertTrue(Math.isPrime(29));
}