First time using Github Copilot

I had Copilot enabled for a while but never really paid attention to its suggestions. Then I needed to add a dynamic copyright year to the footer of this site, and figured it was a good excuse to actually try it properly.

The test

I opened components/Footer.vue and typed a comment:

<!-- Generate dynamic copyright year -->

Copilot suggested this:

<small class="mb-2 flex space-x-2 text-sm text-slate-500 dark:text-slate-400">
  <div>Martijn Bos</div>
  <div>•</div>
  <div>© {{ new Date().getFullYear() }}</div>
</small>

It picked up on the existing Tailwind classes, the dark mode pattern, and even my name from elsewhere in the project. The suggestion was exactly what I would have written myself. I accepted it and moved on.

Thoughts

This is a tiny example, obviously. A dynamic copyright year is not a hard problem. But the interesting part was that Copilot did not just generate the JavaScript expression. It produced a complete template block that matched the styling of the rest of the component.

For small, repetitive tasks like this, it saves a bit of time. Not because the code is hard to write, but because you skip the step of looking up class names and matching the existing patterns.

I have since used it more, and the results vary. It works well for boilerplate and common patterns. It struggles when the logic gets more specific to your project. The autocomplete style of working, where you accept or reject line by line, also has its limits. But for a first impression, it did exactly what I needed.