Thread

1. barney54 · 1790384411 · focus · HN ↗

   Does anyone have any good experiences with copilot? I have never heard anyone say anything good about it.

   1. preommr · 1790385225 · focus · HN ↗

      Copilot was fantastic, it's usage was insane because it was by request not tokens for the longest time. You could make a long markdown file with lots of planned edits, and just let it rip.

      It also had some really good models for basically free while it was in preview instead of being tied to a single provider.

      And finally, it's vscode integration was really good. I use codex now, and changes to a thread are in this awful diff view that shows all changes in a single tab. And even that wasn't working for a while there. No clue if cursor is better never tried it because it takes a lot for me to swtich tools because of all the small things like shorcuts and configurations that I've set over a long time.

      1. weakened_malloc · 1790386004 · focus · HN ↗

         i think OP is talking about MS365 copilot, not github copilot

         1. preommr · 1790386814 · focus · HN ↗

            someone else mentioned how their blood pressure spikes from using microsoft products...

            The sheer anger that I feel over how fuckingly stupid it is that they named everything copilot that basic conversation is difficult... I tried going to the article and got swarmed by paywall, finally checked the archive link and I think you're right.

            1. rolosa · 1790390255 · focus · HN ↗

               I'm seriously wondering if their next Xbox is gonna be branded copilot

               1. Razengan · 1790397615 · focus · HN ↗

                  Microsoft Cope
      2. gentlewater · 1790414403 · focus · HN ↗

         It _was_ fantastic. Then it transitioned to abysmal over night when they switched to usage based billing. Now, if you put the same 50 USD towards GitHub copilot compared to Codex, I’m pretty sure Codex gives you 20x the usage or something. Really sucks for us who are stuck with GitHub copilot at work for compliance reasons.
   2. epihelix · 1790406387 · focus · HN ↗

      Yes, with Enterprise M365 Copilot.

      Select "GPT 5.6 Think deeper" (ugh, so unrevealing, MS) and you've got free, unlimited Sol or Terra (likely a mix depending on load) on tap.

      It writes very nice, clean code with almost no comments.

      I use it a lot.

      1. zerreh50 · 1790434478 · focus · HN ↗

         For me it regularly gives garbled code with random *s and ;s everywhere. I don't get how supposedly frontier models can be made so useless

         1. TurboSkyline · 1790455931 · focus · HN ↗

            This has happened to me, but only a couple of times. I think it’s an issue with the UI, not with the actual LLM output, and a reload of the page fixes it.

            I think it’s related to how they display the LLM output, through some obfuscation layer in the HTML presented to the browser. I tried to save a thread as pdf once and that got me nowhere because of this.

         2. epihelix · 1790484895 · focus · HN ↗

            Yes, it's an absolutely terrible UI, probably the worst ever coupled to an LLM. I have no idea why those *'s pepper the code blocks (but it's not coming from the model: reload, and you'll generally see the codeblock render correctly). The interface is bloated, slow, fugly and massively over-engineered. That's the price of entry.

            But you don't need to get code from the chat window -- that's so 2024. There is an entire agentic coding remote sandbox built into the Enterprise M365 version. It's not talked about, or advertised, but it's there. Just ask for your code changes back in a zip.

            It turns out almost anything is possible with Copilot, if you spend a bit of time thinking it through and exploring its capabilities. It is a surprisingly powerful platform.

      2. TurboSkyline · 1790456024 · focus · HN ↗

         I agree, “Think Deeper” seems good for chatbot-style use. However, “Quick Response” is awful, even for simple, one-step queries and very often makes things up or contradicts its earlier replies.

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