Episode 56: GitHub’s Scott Densmore on the Copilot Revolution, Coding at the Speed of Thought

Mik + One: The Official Project to Product Podcast by Dr. Mik Kersten

Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Scott Densmore, VP of Engineering at GitHub, to discuss the future of connected work and the impact of GitHub Copilot on developer productivity.
GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered tool that provides code completion and suggestions to developers, allowing them to write code faster and more efficiently. Scott shares the history of GitHub Copilot and how it has evolved to become a game-changer in the world of software development. He also talks about developer flow and happiness and explains how Copilot enhances these aspects by reducing toil and increasing productivity.

Listen as Mik and Scott discuss the potential for customization and extensibility in Copilot, allowing developers to build their agents and their skills to further enhance their workflows.

Key discussions include:

• GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered tool that provides code completion and suggestions to developers, increasing productivity and reducing toil.
• Copilot has been in development for several years, with a focus on fine-tuning the models and prompts to provide accurate and helpful suggestions across multiple programming languages.
• Studies have shown that developers using Copilot can complete tasks in significantly less time, leading to increased productivity and happiness.
• Customization is a key feature of Copilot, allowing developers to build models on top of their own code and improve the accuracy of suggestions.
• The introduction of chat functionality in Copilot allows developers to ask questions, get explanations of code, and even generate tests or refactorings.
• GitHub is working on an extensibility platform for Copilot to enhance their workflows and bring in expertise from various tools and services.

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Additional Resources:

• Portfolio SAFe
• Dean Leffingwell on the Mik + One Podcast: Part 1, Part 2
• MarTech
• Dave West - podcast episode
• Scrum Studio
• Greenfield project
• Skunkworks
• Bimodal IT
• Agile Release Train
• Mik + One Podcast Episode 20: Justin Watts
• Join the Flow Framework Community