GitHub Copilot vs. Windsurf

Copilit is fantastic at the following: 1. Solving simple, well-defined problems, such as implementing an algorithm, manipulating a data structure, or string manipulation and regex. 2. Implementing simple APIs that are mainly CRUD in nature, with moderate business logic inside them, which may involve some processing or passing the data through an algorithm. 3. Implementation of well-defined activities, such as implementing a connection to an Oracle DB using Hibernate or JDBC, or implementing boilerplate code for a backend service to listen to Kafka events. It is not that great when it comes to understanding and implementing code in a proprietary DSL. It struggles when implementing a major feature across a complex codebase. I believe developers should also adopt the trust-but-verify paradigm when expecting highly secure or regulated code from GitHub Copilot.

Incentivized

If you already have technical knowledge and understanding of coding, Windsurf could be a valuable platform to debug and rewrite code. It was helpful to me to expand coding, since I am not a traditionally programmer. I was able to enhance my base code and functionality much quicker than manually trying.

Incentivized

• Make code development faster and quicker.
• Helps write better code standards for projects.
• Provide the latest functions from the technology.
• Notifies about the deprecated functions.

Incentivized

• Quick code isolation of sytax errors
• quick suggestions on how to correct coding error

Incentivized

• The only issue I faced is the context token size, it can be increase.
• Sometime with agent mode it takes too much time, which can be reduced but I understand it also depends on the complexity of the given task.

Incentivized

• Windsurf is target to more medium to advanced users
• Windsurf does fast debugging, but technical skills are needed.
• Windsurf is not as intuitive as I initially thought.

Incentivized

I feel that GitHub Copilot's overall usability is good due to its tight integration with Visual Studio and the workspace. However, developers expect greater ease of use, as there is a learning curve to realize productivity gains with the tool fully. I think there is room for improvement in GitHub Copilot's UI integration within Visual Studio.

Incentivized

Windsurf is a good tool for developers with more than basic coding skills. I would recommend it as a tool to quickly mitigate coding errors and issues. I did not take a deeper dive into the integrated extensions, but the library of extensions appear to be solid. An experience developer could quickly launch this platform, scan and test coding, and resolve issues quickly. I did not test this for larger code sets.

Incentivized

It is useful that copilot integrates so well with vscode, which is a very common IDE. I used Tabnine for a little while but it was not that intuitive, and did not seem as helpful as GitHub copilot was. I have enjoyed GitHub copilot a lot, especially the ease of hitting the tab key and seeing quick progress in my tasks.

Incentivized

Windsurf would be more comparable to GitHub Copilot or Perplexity to me. I think it's more of a pure code debugging line by line than some of the other tools listed above, however, they all have some capabilities to rewrite and test new coding. It boils down to what toolset you are most comfortable with. I typically will work with two platforms with the same issue to see how it is approached and the differences.

Incentivized

• Our ROI of the purchase of Copilot was met in less than a day. The timesave cannot be overstated
• Programmer boredom/dissatisfaction is down because of less repetetive crud work.

Incentivized

• ROI is significant time saved from debugging, rewriting code, and testing
• AI generated development can test executable code in a controlled environment

Incentivized