I have a few deployment activities on my plate for Azure Stack HCI and AKS using PowerShell. I have been interested in GitHub Copilot, and what little I have seen is interesting but just haven’t had time to “dig in”. Figuring this was as good a time as any to try copilot in VS code to assist me in writing some PowerShell deployment scripts, I decided to jump in.
With no time to learn or research anything, I decided the best approach rather than do nothing, was to sign-up, read zero documentation and see how intuitive copilot actually is, and share my experience. You only have one opportunity to use something for the first time.
$100 for 1 year, 60-day free trial, enter a credit card, install the extension, authenticate extension, and literally within minutes had my copilot silently standing by.
Here are some impressions captured during the first 6 days of my experience.
The first thing I had to get used to, was the tab to complete the suggestions. I really just wanted to tab and suddenly I have code.
Next, I began to notice that my copilot was starting to become aware of context with variables in the page and understanding what I was trying to do. Completing repeatable patterns and adding valuable comments.
Below this case, the variable $configrationDataFile was in another open file and was actually the thing I wanted to load. Additionally, this created the Mandatory parameter correctly. I'll be honest I probably wouldn’t have added mandatory code.
Here, I had written a for each loop to invoke some commands, then realized I needed to create the PS session first. I moved the cursor up and created a new line and my copilot knew what I needed. Tab Cheers
I manually created the HCIAdminGroup variable and parameters and went to the next line, and my copilot suggested HCIClusterAdminGroup. I wondered how many more credentials it would create. All those shown in the square, I didn’t need or perhaps better said at this stage I don’t think I need them, but all good suggestions.
I was adding comments as headers to a function and discovered this is how you created a complete function. Which I then remembered was the demo I had seen. Not a bad start, Tab
tab
I spent some time on this function as it was. I didn’t capture the error from this code above but got one related. This was tough, it was trying to get a secure string from a keyvault and create a credential. I did spend more time messing with it than probably writing it.
I deleted it and thought I would try a more comprehensive comment and after knowing the issue and writing a better description, my copilot provided a better path.
There were more examples but hopefully, this gives you an impression of what the beginner, with no research experience, looked like, over my first 6 days.
Overall, I am very impressed with my complete lack of knowledge of how to use it, and how well it did “just work”. I did spend some time wrestling with the code created, perhaps I trusted it as if I had written it myself. After a few hiccups, I started taking the approach of verification and validation as the first step and simply reading it, before executing it and even deleting complete functions and trying to describe what I need more comprehensively.
I can see value in that you could create a full skeleton of a module or script just from comments and work through flow or logic issues before committing time to writing code.
This hands-on experience has motivated me to go learn about shortcut keys, settings, and other options. I might even make time to read some documentation; What I can turn on or off? what else it can actually do? I am beginning to feel a need to name my copilot.
If you have a coding project and haven’t tried GitHub Copilot, I strongly suggest signing up for 1 year and giving it a shot, no learning is required. Put a reminder in your calendar for 58 days later and decide if you want to continue coding with copilot.
On day 6, I can say for $8.30 a month, I’m pretty confident I won’t be coding solo again.
Probably spending 5 minutes to browse and read the documentation would have been helpful, though that wasn’t the point of my experiment. Getting started with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code - GitHub Docs. I wonder if Copilot for PowerPoint is on the road map… “Tell ‘em he’s dreaming” ;)
Quick start shortcut keys
Trigger suggestions Atl + \
Complete suggestion TAB
Seeing alternative suggestions
OS See next suggestion See previous suggestion
macOS Option (⌥) or Alt+] Option (⌥) or Alt+[
Windows Alt+] Alt+[
Linux Alt+] Alt+[
Getting started with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code - GitHub Docs
