Copilot Can't Beat a 2013 'TouchDevelop' Code Generation Demo for Windows Phone
- Reference: 0176867993
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/30/2333226/copilot-cant-beat-a-2013-touchdevelop-code-generation-demo-for-windows-phone
- Source link:
That's what [1]TouchDevelop did for the long-discontinued [2]Windows Phone in a [3]2013 Microsoft Research 'SmartSynth' natural language [4]code generation [5]demo . ("Write scripts by tapping on the screen.")
Long-time Slashdot reader [6]theodp reports on what happens when, 14 years later, you pose the same question to Copilot:
> " [7]You'll get lots of code and caveats from Copilot , but nothing that you can execute as is. (Compare that to the functioning [8]10 lines of code TouchDevelop program ). It's a good reminder that just because GenAI can generate code, it doesn't necessarily mean it will generate the least amount of code, the most understandable or appropriate code for the requestor, or code that runs unchanged and produces the desired results.
[9]theodp also reminds us that TouchDevelop "was ( [10]like BASIC ) [11]abandoned by Microsoft ..."
> Interestingly, a [12]Microsoft Research video from CS Education Week 2011 shows enthusiastic Washington high school students participating in an hour-long TouchDevelop coding lesson and demonstrating the apps they created that tapped into music, photos, the Internet, and yes, even their phone's functionality. This shows how lacking iPhone and Android still are today as far as easy programmability-for-the-masses goes. (When asked, Copilot replied that [13]Apple's Shortcuts app wasn't up to the task).
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/touchdevelop/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/smartsynth-synthesizing-smartphone-automation-scripts-natural-language/
[4] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/mobisys13.pdf
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfdhUR439rw&%3Bt=330s
[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~theodp
[7] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOYvR-17jpOKJ80ug-quBMMxzU-1W_yg/view?usp=sharing
[8] https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54420735815_96f4843a8a_b.jpg
[9] https://www.slashdot.org/~theodp
[10] https://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/01/11/0213209/k-12-cs-efforts-earn-microsoft-ceo-ringside-seat-for-state-of-the-union-address
[11] https://makecode.com/touchdevelop
[12] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/touchdevelop-excites-students/
[13] https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/welcome/ios
Copilot? (Score:3)
Might as well have asked a turnip while they were at it. Copilot is the special needs model in the LLM world.
Crap story. (Score:2)
This story is stupid.
I posed the question he should have posed, since he wanted to compare it to whatever this weird TouchDevelop script is: "write a program that can be run on an iPhone 16 to select 15 random photos from the phone, tint them to random colors, and display the photos on the phone in TouchDevelop script" to gemma-3-27b-fp16.
Since he didn't specify what language he wanted it in, he got it in Swift. Similarly, mine produce Swift as well when it wasn't asked to use a specific language.
Swift
Why would the two things be comparable? (Score:2)
A device-specific script generator for an old Windows Phone, vs. a brand new iPhone app? This comparison makes no sense.
That 2013 demo would have had very strict constraints on what you could ask it to do, and the wording you had to use to get it to do it. That's what AI shines at...being able to "understand" prompts that are poorly worded or leave things out.
Re: Why would the two things be comparable? (Score:2)
Feels a bit like AppleScript, a language that makes some things easy, and others damn near impossible; but in the end it relies on an era that ceased to exist decades ago.
1 + 1 = egg (Score:2)
1 + 1 = egg
This is entirely a non-sequitur