GitHub has recently introduced a free tier for Copilot, so now there is absolutely no reason not to try it out. I decided to give it a go on some day-to-day coding to see how much more productive it is than coding by hand.

To be honest, I rather like coding by hand so I haven’t used AI to generate code to any great extent. I think this is going to change.

Initially, I only used Copilot for simple coding tasks and I was pleasantly surprised how quick and easy it was — considerably quicker than coding by hand. Next, I created a Streamlit app that involved a bit of data analysis, and then I let Copilot make it more interactive by adding user interface controls. All this without me writing a single line of code!

I used Microsoft VSCode and added the GitHub Copilot extension, so, if you want to follow along you need to install the extension and read the instructions on how to get started with it. Copilot supports other editors as well but VSCode is currently my editor of choice.

I’ll get to the visualization and Streamlit code shortly, but first, let’s look at the ways we can use Copilot.

Copilot modes