Vibe Coding with GitHub Copilot (Getting Started with GitHub Copilot)

I'm currently teaching a computational linguistics course, and for just the second time, I'm using Github Classroom to manage assignments. I might make a few posts about what I've learned in the process, but for now, I think I'll focus on what's gone right, and what's been more challenging in using Github Codespaces. Github Codespaces A Github Codespace is basically a virtual machine hosted by Github with VS Code as the default interface.

The science blog archive Rogue Scholar depends heavily on GitHub Actions. They are used to trigger content and metadata extraction of new blog posts and to register DOIs for these posts with Crossref. More recently they have also been used to push this content and metadata to the new InvenioRDM-based Rogue Scholar platform. GitHub Actions are workflows that typically operate on the command line.

I'm teaching a class on quantitative methods in linguistics, and after getting tired, over the years, of debugging everyone's computer before we could get to the content of learning R (much less quantitative methods), I decided to seize control. I'm running the course through GitHub Classroom which comes with an educational allowance for using GitHub codespaces.

Two years ago GitHub introduced the ability to sponsor an open source contributor – person or organization. They handle (and pay for) the payment logistics for a one-time or regular contribution. A blog post from June 2019 describes the thinking of the GiHub Sponsors team that went into this service, and the practicalities of using the service are documented here.