In the series, I will build a simple Hacker News reader for iOS using Firebase, SwiftUI and GitHub Copilot X. In part 4, I use GitHub Copilot X to tackle the following developer housekeeping tasks:

• Add Swift LSP support in VSCode
• Enable vim bindings in VSCode
• How to run a terminal in VSCode
• Thoughts on GitHub Copilot Chat for developer house keeping

1. Housekeeping tasks

All of these housekeeping tasks were pretty simple (install extensions and keyboard shortcuts) but I didn’t know if GitHub Chat was only for coding related questions or broader. The good news is it’s broader and easily walked me, a new VSCode user, through the steps.

Now I’m wondering if the underlying model for Copilot Chat is more like a full GPT-4 LLM or specifically turned just for code and coding related inquiries. So I’ll have to add that to the experiment list.

2. GitHub Copilot X thoughts - part 4

Pretty much said it above but it’s great that Copilot Chat is able to handle more than just specific coding tasks. For developers, we don’t just sit down and code. In fact, we spend a lot of time reasoning out structure and code, looking up references or sample code and more. There are really important developer housekeeping tasks that if put off (which is easy to do), get costly over time. So it’s great that Copilot Chat can help make some of these tasks pretty effortless.

In Part 5, I’ll focus on setting up source control and then GitHub Actions to support GitHub flow, a “lightweight, branch-based workflow”.