2 Getting started with Copilot

This chapter will help you start working with Copilot on your own machine and familiarize you with how to interact with it. After you are set up with Copilot, we’ll ask that you follow along with our examples when you can. There’s no substitute for practice, and we believe you can learn right alongside us for the remainder of the book.

Once you’ve set up Copilot, we’ll walk through a fun example that showcases the power of Copilot in solving standard tasks, you’ll see how to interact with Copilot, and you’ll learn how we can write software without writing any actual code ourselves.

2.1 Time to set up your computer to start learning

Learning how to write software requires that you perform the task of writing software, not just reading about it. If this were a book on how to play guitar, would you keep reading it without ever trying to play the guitar? We thought not. Reading this book without following along and trying it out yourself would be like watching a marathon runner finish the race and thinking you’re ready to go run one yourself. We’ll stop with the analogies, but seriously, you need to get your software installed and running before we go farther.

2.1.1 Overview of the software in your programming environment

2.2 Getting your system set up

2.3 Working with Copilot in Visual Studio Code

2.3.1 Set up your working folder

2.3.2 Check to see if your setup is working properly

2.4 Addressing common Copilot challenges

2.5 Our first programming problem

2.5.1 Showcasing Copilot’s value in a data processing task

Summary