WEBVTT

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-: Welcome back.

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So in this video we'll have a look

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at GitHub Copilot prompting.

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We'll also make sure that your installation is successful.

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So what you should do is in the bottom right here,

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you should have this icon.

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And then if you see, here it should say,

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would you like to disable Copilot?

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So we know that Copilot is running.

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Another way to test that would be to open up

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the 0_single_line_comments.py file

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and just have a look and just literally start adding a space

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and watching it as Copilot pulls out

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this multi-line comment inside of Python.

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Cool, let's move on and step it up a notch.

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We can also define complete functions

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and what those functions should do

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inside of Python comments.

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So in this example, we've got a function called get name

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and return name that takes in a single argument name

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and returns, hello name, and then let's see how Copilot

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starts to deal with this comment.

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Great, so now we've made the function.

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Let's also do this one which says,

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import the datetime package

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and then create a function

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that returns today's date and time.

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So sometimes here you've got an example

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where Copilot isn't starting.

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So what I'd recommend is doing something like something

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like this whilst adding a def

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and then that will trigger Copilot

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to then know the next piece of information

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that it needs is to make a function name.

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As well as that, we don't also just have to use comments.

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We could, for example, make a really explicit function name

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and then decide to see what happens.

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So in this one we've got Return State today's string

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using their datetime package.

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We can see that Copilot is really able to understand

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when we make a very explicit function names,

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it knows exactly what needs to happen inside the function.

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Let's also take this if statements.

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We've got a data Python list with a single key

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of a dictionary, single item of a dictionary,

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and inside that we've got a customer,

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product, quantity and price

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and we're saying if the first customer is customer one,

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then print customer is the first customer.

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So again, Copilot is able to handle if statements.

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Let's step it up an notch and look at looping.

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We can say, for example, loop over all the customers.

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Notice how as well as that, Copilot has copied

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some of our original code from the if_statements.py.

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The reason why the Copilot is doing this

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is 'cause it's scanning your entire project directory

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all at the same time.

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This could be quite useful because it understands

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and starts to learn your individual coding patterns.

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Let's have a look at a typing example in Python,

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where you can also do things such as import Pandas,

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get first customers age with a data frame, which is a type

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of PD.dataframe is passed in.

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Pandas is really clever

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and what we can see here is Copilot not only generates

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the documentation for the function given the types,

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but it also is able to work out the return type,

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knowing that it's probably likely to be an integer.

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Also, notice how it's using some package functionality

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from Pandas.

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Without adding the type, maybe it wouldn't have been able

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to reach that extra information.

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So having types in your code also helps Copilots understand

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what are the types going into the function

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and what are the types that should go out of the function.

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So far in this video, we've had a look

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at all the different ways that I recommend using Copilot.

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So not just using it in comments,

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but using it for function names.

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Also using it inside of your control flow,

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such as if statements, for and while loops, et cetera.