Today I spent the time I would have taken to write an article to start reviewing the 8th light’s TDD starter’s guide: https://8thlight.com/insights/getting-started-tdd-practical-guide

I’m excited to practice more TDD. But the lion’s share of time was spent on researching AI tools and trying to configure some in VS Code.

Then I took time to play with Visual Studio Code to see what I could do with the free version of Github Copilot extension. Turns out that the first extension I was playing with called Augment which was connected to the site augmentcode.com was able to see and analyze all the files in a workspace, while the Github Copilot extension could only see files I uploaded in the embedded chat interface. Although perhaps it can see code in Github repositories I have. I’ll have to see if that’s the case.

I did find a second extension called Cogent which claimed to extend Github Copilot so that it can see and work with all of my Workspace files. I got it installed, but was unable to get Cogent to work with the free Github Copilot yet. Although it might be possible if I select a different default model. The model it was trying to use by default seems as though it is unaccessible. It would be nice to play with something that did what I want for free.

I was half tempted to buy a monthly subscription to AugmentCode, but the least expensive option was $50 per month. That seems expensive, but mainly because I haven’t done anything with it yet. If it ends up speeding up or improving the coding I do in various ways, it would be immediately worth it. In the meantime though, before I’ve played around with these coding assistants, I’ll just keep my options open and try a few other things.

I may move back to the SDopenAI plugin I purchased for Access which allows direct access in the VBE environment. But the particular plugin I purchased acts similarly to Github Copilot in that it is not looking or training on the whole code base. That one is pay as you go.