back to article I see you're writing an app... Microsoft nudges AI Clippy-for-Code out the door, turns machine learning onto Word

Microsoft today announced various AI-related tools during its annual Build developer conference in Seattle. Are you tired of your stubby fingers hitting the wrong keys when you code? Are you tired of pressing the delete key again and again? Are you tired of pesky spelling mistakes and buggy source? Well, perhaps Redmond's …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Clippy For Coders drives another nail in humanity's coffin...

    Suuuuurrrrrreeee, modern-day Clippy SAYS that it is just a productivity-enhancement tool for developers, until the underlying applications start accessing nuclear launch codes and giving green lights to all hapless meatbags as they approach 4-way intersections.

    1. DCFusor

      Re: Clippy For Coders drives another nail in humanity's coffin...

      That's the problem with marketing. You so easily believe the hype that this stuff can even work right by *any definition whatever*. I'm not worried, especially given the track record of the source.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Clippy For Coders drives another nail in humanity's coffin...

      more CRAP to shut off by default...

  2. harmjschoonhoven

    Can Clippy® help you?

    E perché sono di tre generazione cervelli, l'uno intende da sé, l'altro discerne quello che altri intende, el terzo non intende né sé né altri, quel primo è eccellentissimo, el secondo eccellente, el terzo inutile. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (1513), Cap. XXI.

    There are three different kinds of brains, the one understands things unassisted, the other understands things when shown by others, the third understands neither alone nor with the explanations of others. The first kind is most excellent , the second is also excellent, but the third is useless.

    1. Denarius
      Happy

      Re: Can Clippy® help you?

      The first kind is most excellent , the second is also excellent, but the third is useless too often elected. FTFY

    2. redpawn

      Re: Can Clippy® help you?

      The third is management material.

  3. Tim99 Silver badge
    Windows

    Please, stop spoiling us

    Two puff sales pieces "improving" MS Visual Studio in less than an hour.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Please, stop spoiling us

      strangely enough, I'm more productive using Pluma as my code editor...

      1. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: Pluma

        Give me EMACS or give me death

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Denarius
          Happy

          Re: Pluma

          Dear John, not sorry to tell you this, but its vi always

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Please, stop spoiling us

      Of course, its not like there's a huge annual Microsoft event to report on, or anything.

      1. Tim99 Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: Please, stop spoiling us

        OK, I think I have some entitlement to be snarky about the latest and greatest shiny new MS programming environments.

        The scars that I carry go back to MS/PC-DOS on a 5160 and include Microsoft C (2?); QuickBASIC; QuickC; MS FORTRAN 3 (yes, really); Visual Basic (up to 6); .NET; VBA (more than I care to think about); and Visual Studio from V97 to V2008, until I (mercifully) finally fully retired from doing that stuff for money.

        Those are some of the reasons why I look like this >>====>

  4. N2
    Trollface

    I see you are writing an app...

    Would you like me to fuck that up as well?

  5. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Trollface

    Good to see MS dogfoods its own products

    Shame it then hits the build key, packages the result, and releases Windows 10 to the world.

  6. David Lewis 2
    Facepalm

    What could possibly go wrong.

    Hi. It looks like you are writing an app ... Here are some <del>useful</del> totally inappropriate code snippets I have found. Would you like me to insert them?

  7. Daedalus

    Gigamess

    I have to admit, I like to use auto-completion and fixup tools. What I don't like is the way they keep popping up stuff when I don't want it. There's always some little thing appearing over your text right where you want to type. Sure, you can turn them off (it says here in small print) but finding out how to do that usually means navigating MS's accurate-but-unhelpful "help". Sometimes you hit F1 and wind up at "Welcome to Visual Studio!". Thanks!

    And all these gigaflops and gigabytes help you to do....exactly what you did before. What you did 10 years ago in fact. And 10 years before that.

    But wait, there's more! The same misguided guidance will be popping up in Word, an application which people mostly use to write text, the way they did decade after decade since that tiny, beautifully capable version of Word first appeared. That version could probably run on one of the peripheral controllers of a modern PC board, and still do most of what users need. The gigamess that is the current version served only to help some thrusting executive climb that greasy pole.

    1. Adrian 4

      Re: Gigamess

      We're going to get some pretty laughable excuses for code if Studio actually uses those hints it's been promoting as 'online help'.

      Oh, wait ..

  8. herman

    Phantasmic - the equivalent of Lorem Ipsum code.

    O'l Ceasar Cicero woulda been proud - or spinning in his grave... not sure which.

  9. BenjaminHare

    End-to-end software AI autonomously ON REAL ROBOTS?!

    "Finally, Redmond announced it was crafting an end-to-end software package that can run AI code autonomously on real robots." This will be the end of us all. As we speak robots deep within the bowels of Sarcos and Toyota are using their spare cycles to craft what will one day become Skynet. Future generations will look back upon the Build 2019 conference as the beginning of the end.

    1. Denarius

      Re: End-to-end software AI autonomously ON REAL ROBOTS?!

      Indeed Ben. I did think "we are doomed", then remembered, its M$ tooling, so code will fall over after 48 days or less. If not, only way to survive will be booby trapping trees with super-magnets and magnetic mines. Oh, using titanium you say. Damn, need a stash of solar chargeable batteries for the metal detectors too.

  10. Flywheel
    Facepalm

    Ideas for Microsoft Word Online

    How about you present me with a blank page, and some non-configurable drop-down menus that fit on one screen? I can then write my short letter, by myself and maybe get to print it out?

    Thank you.

    1. cookieMonster Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Ideas for Microsoft Word Online

      I wouldn’t be too hopeful of printing... maybe you can, maybe you can’t ....

      1. Flywheel

        Re: Ideas for Microsoft Word Online

        I could ask a dodgy 3rd party to do that for me ... https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/30/windows_print_spool_vuln_rce/

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Old olde auld news

    Why is this story linked on the front page today? It is from 2019!

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