Context Is Everything: Getting the Most from GitHub Copilot with Joydip Kanjilal

Strategic Technology Consultation Services

This episode of The Modern .NET Show is supported, in part, by RJJ Software's Strategic Technology Consultation Services. If you're an SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) leader wondering why your technology investments aren't delivering, or you're facing critical decisions about AI, modernization, or team productivity, let's talk.

Show Notes

"Artificial intelligence is nothing new. It enables machines to simulate human cognitive functions such as reasoning, learning, problem solving and all using algorithms and vast data data sets to recognise patterns. And then it makes predictions and performs, you know, language processing, image recognition, and all those stuff."— Joydip Kanjilal

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Modern .NET Show; the premier .NET podcast, focusing entirely on the knowledge, tools, and frameworks that all .NET developers should have in their toolbox. I'm your host Jamie Taylor, bringing you conversations with the brightest minds in the .NET ecosystem.

Today, we're joined by Joydip Kanjilal to talk about GitHub Copilot, agentic workflows for developers, and the benefits (and drawbacks) of having an AI agent help you write code.

Note that I didn't say, "write all the code for you," because an AI agent is simply helping you to be more productive.

"You want to you know, convert, I mean uh migrate a legacy application to a modern-day enterprise application, there will be a lot of redundant code that you will otherwise have to write. So that all that code can be automatically generated by Copilot, provided you have provided the right context."— Joydip Kanjilal

Along the way, we talked about the importance of the context that you give to an AI agent, security best practises (spoiler: you wouldn't give a new junior the keys to teh castle on day one, do the same with your AI agents), and the most important things to remember when using AI agents.

Before we jump in, a quick reminder: if The Modern .NET Show has become part of your learning journey, please consider supporting us through Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee. Every contribution helps us continue bringing you these in-depth conversations with industry experts. You'll find all the links in the show notes.

Anyway, without further ado, let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in `dotnet new podcast` and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET.

Full Show Notes

The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-8/context-is-everything-getting-the-most-from-github-copilot-with-joydip-kanjilal/

Useful Links:

• Joydip's website
• Joydip's blog
• Joydip's GitHub

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Music created by Mono Memory Music, licensed to RJJ Software for use in The Modern .NET Show.

Editing and post-production services for this episode were provided by MB Podcast Services.