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Comment by azangru | Hacker News Reader

> GitHub is going to be trusted a lot more

> GitHub has a brand that's trusted more

Consider Google Translate, right? Google is a well-known brand that is trusted (outside of a relatively small group of people that doesn't trust Google on principle). Yet every professional translator knows that the text produced by Google Translate is a result of machine translation, Google or no Google. They may marvel at the occasional accuracy, yet expect serious blunders in the text, and would therefore not just trust that translation before submitting it to their clients. They will check. Or at least they should.

Same with programmers.

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Sure. Is Google Translate used only by serious professional translators who have a rigorous translation-checking process? Not at all.

And as you say, it will be the same with programmers. Who's this being targeted at? People "working in a new language or framework, or just learning to code". The whole value prop is, "You don't have to know what's going on!"

The important difference is that the target readers can usually spot an egregiously bad translation. But the target users for software cannot easily spot gaping security holes and other serious issues until something bad happens.

> The whole value prop is, "You don't have to know what's going on!"

The value proposition is a better tab completion. It's not autopilot.

> The important difference is that the target readers can usually spot an egregiously bad translation.

What, no, that's not true at all, that's like the second biggest problem. GTL routinely does stuff like invert the meaning of clauses, or drop information, or hallucinate absent context. Target readers can't reasonably be expected to catch any of that.

In which case it's not an egregiously bad translation, it's a subtly bad one. Progress of a sort, I guess!

I think this is an important way we need to frame the use of these tools for junior developers. I'd advise that anyone who is recommending this product to their team also take the time to give this analogy - maybe even going so far as to require explicit comments that notifies reviewers when code was provided by Copilot and similar services.

The difference here is that professional translators often have professional training.

The bar is substantially lower for a 'programmer', especially with an incredibly large bootcamp market which churn out 'professional' 'programmers' in 6-8 weeks.

Been to a bootcamp? Know some leetcode? Someone will hire you. And then you got Copilot advertising its services to you as a way to learn how to code. The implication of 'learn to code' being 'learn to code correctly'.

Google Translate has no similar relationship with professional translators.

> The difference here is that professional translators often have professional training.

You'd be surprised. What you described here for programmers is true for translators as well, and probably for many other specialities in which the ability to deliver the result is more important than any documents certifying that you've had a formal training for how to deliver those results. In case of translators — found an agency? Check. Passed an interview with a test? Check. You are good to go.

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