10 posts tagged with "productivity"

Introduction​

Imagine a tool that can dive into real GitHub repositories to debug and fix issues automatically. That's SWE-agent for you, a project born at Princeton University, where language models like GPT-4 are turned into software engineering agents. These aren't just toys either; they've shown to resolve over 12% of software issues tested in the SWE-bench dataset. While 12% might not initially seem high, it represents a significant leap from the previous benchmark of just 3.79%. This achievement marks a considerable advancement in the field, underscoring the growing potential of AI to transform software development and maintenance.

My journey into SWE-agent began with curiosity and a bit of a stumble. I wanted to set up a local dev environment to study the model's inference step but the project doesn't say how to set up such an environment! It's a familiar story in open-source projects, especially those with roots in academia. I encountered a mix of excitement and frustration, reading through the setup instructions in the README and realizing the commitment needed to even start. And I wasn't the only one feeling this way; a community issue highlighted similar struggles.

Deciding to lean into the challenge, I saw an opportunity to simplify this for everyone. While the official setup process is being refined, I've put together an alternative guide to get you up and running with SWE-agent in a local dev environment using dev containers.

All you need is Docker and VS Code!

Introduction​

In the realm of software development, debugging is not only inevitable but can also be a complex endeavor.

Picture this: you're faced with the task of deciphering what's occurring within a server that's already humming along. Relaunching it with an attached debugger, the usual go-to method, isn't an option.

In this post, we'll navigate this challenge, zeroing in on how to debug an already running FastAPI server in the rag-stack project as an example. And for those on a tight schedule, here's a quick video tutorial breaking down the process:

Introduction​

Today, we're going to discuss an efficient way to set up your automated integration test workflows using Docker and Pytest.

Motivation​

In an era where software complexity is rapidly growing, developing an efficient testing strategy is more than a mere best practice — it's the bedrock of stable and reliable applications.

One common strategy involves using Docker to set up a test version of a software component, such as a vector database. There are two popular variations to this strategy, both of which have their own limitations.

Ever since large language models have taken the world by storm, I've been curious about how helpful these AI-powered chatbots can be to programmers like myself.

To put them to the test, I decided to build a couple of simple API endpoints using FastAPI and see how ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing Chat can assist me in the process.

Here's how they fared:

Every time I work on a Python project, I find myself having to look up the VS Code launch configuration to enable Pytest to step into 3rd party libraries when using the interactive debugger. It became quite frustrating, and I knew I couldn't be the only one facing this issue. So, I decided to create a video tutorial to share my knowledge and help fellow developers set up their projects more efficiently.

As a programmer, you've likely encountered moments where you needed help with a coding problem or wanted to find a more efficient solution. I recently faced a challenge while trying to generate a UUID3 string in Python, and the internal documentation wasn't helpful. That's when I discovered Sydney (Bing Chat) and was amazed at how quickly and effectively it provided a solution, complete with a code snippet!

In this blog post, I'll share my experience with Bing Chat and highlight the standout user experience offered by Sydney in Microsoft Edge.

If you're a fan of Copilot, you know how AI can significantly improve your coding experience. But what if AI could also write your commit messages for you? With GitLens 13.4, this dream has become a reality! In this blog post, we'll explore how AI-generated commit messages can transform your Git workflow and boost your productivity.

A lot of people I know will repeatedly alternate between writing an endpoint in their IDE and Postman/Swagger to test it. I do not like this workflow because of the constant context switching. I also find that it's easy to forget to test a scenario or to test the wrong scenario. I've found that it's much easier to test the API in the IDE itself.

I personally prefer the Test Driven Development (TDD) approach. I find that it helps me to write better code and to think about the API design before I actually start writing code. I also find that it helps me to write better tests and to think about the different scenarios that I need to test for.

So, how can we do this in VS Code?

When working on an open source project, it's easy to lose track of the issues and pull requests that you are working on. I've been guilty of this myself and have had to go back to GitHub to find the issue or PR that I was working on. If you don't track it yourself, you can easily forget about it and that issue or PR will stay open for months on end.

Fortunately, GitLens 13.3 has a new feature called Focus View that makes it easy to track the issues and PRs that you are working on. It's a great way to keep track of what you are working on and to make sure that you don't forget about it.

Here's how it works:

Copilot is a service from GitHub that uses machine learning to help you write code. It was made generally available to the public on 21 June 2022.

As a person working in AI, I was very skeptical about this feature, and did not bother trying it for a long time. I expected it would generate code that is so buggy that it would be more productive to write the code by hand.

Until one day, a colleague whom I had a lot of respect for was singing praises about how Copilot helped him write a complex piece of code, and I decided to give it a try.