Skip to main content

GitHub Copilot–We still need the human in the loop

I picked up a bug today where we got a NullReferenceException. I thought this was a good scenario where I could ask GitHub Copilot to find and fix the issue for me.

Here is the orignal code containing the issue:

I asked Copilot to investigate and fix the issue using the /fix slash command;

/fix This code returns a NullReferenceException in some situations. Can you investigate an issue and suggest a solution?

GitHub Copilot was successful in identifying the root cause of the problem. I was passing a ConnectionName using a different casing as the key found in the dictionary (e.g. Northwind vs northwind).

That’s good.

However then I noticed the solution it suggested:

Although that is a workable solution that certainly fixes the issue, it is certainly not the simplest and most performant solution. I undid the changes done by Copilot and updated the Dictionary construction instead:

The human in the loop is still required...

More information

Tips & Tricks for GitHub Copilot Chat in Visual Studio - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...
Read more

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...
Read more