Github Copilot annoyances

I am a heavy user of Microsoft Visual Studio Code programming with Python for my own, non commercial projects.

Github Copilot provides only 2,000 free suggestions per months! This very stingy! But these suggestions are in most cases very usable and relevant!

Latest experiences with Visual Studio Code and AI coding assistance

This week, I started again on some smaller Python coding projects.

First of all Visual Studio Code is a really great, free IDE. It is a lot better than other free IDEs I have tried in the past. Disclosure: I am probably strongly biased towards VS, because in my professional career as software developer, I worked mostly in VS.

Well, I have about four AI coding extension installed, i.e. Copilot, Claude, Gemini, and Windsurf. They seem to get along with each other, no conflicts noticed. 😊

However, my experience was very mixed so far:

1. It seems they pick up on my practices after some time and start following my practices. That is a plus!
2. They seem to be very good with e.g the "print(f'...')" statement. This helpful!
3. Automatically creating docstrings for functions/methods seems to be working fine too!
4. Many code suggestions are very annoying if not wrong and you have to pay close attention not to mess up things.
5. Some (too few) code suggestions (including multi line) were extremely helpful and surprisingly correct, even following my practices.
6. In a few cases, they suggested the complete multi-line code for new functions/methods that I had indeed in mind solely based on the name for the function/method that I provided. Great! 

Best AI Coding Tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and Copilot

Maybe I should try Claude Code soon when I use Visual Studio Code again! I feel so empowered now! 😊

I am scratching my head to think of use cases/scenarios when you do coding on the command line as appears to be the preferred method with Claude Code?

Currently, I use Windsurf and Copilot in VSCode. Windsurf seems to be OK for my purposes, but Copilot sucks! Copilot is disappointing, because e.g. of the freebie version comes with very tight usage limits that I easily exceed.

Just installed the Claude Code extension for VS Code on my laptop. I will test it ASAP.

Apparently, there is no Cursor (by Anysphere) extension available in VS Code. I quickly checked it.

Google AI mode search tells me: "Cursor is based on VS Code:

Cursor is built upon the VS Code codebase, allowing it to leverage many of VS Code's features, including its extensive extension ecosystem."

"AI-powered software development tools are rapidly evolving. What began as enhanced autocomplete has expanded into AI agents that can write applications, debug problems, and manage entire codebases—or, at least, try. ...

Cursor, launched in 2023 by the AI lab Anysphere, was the first AI coding tool to gain widespread popularity among developers and remains the most popular AI-focused integrated development environment (IDE) today. ...

Released in February, Claude Code stands out because it’s not an IDE. It instead works directly in the MacOS terminal [???] or Linux command line [???], which is helpful for developers who prefer to use a text-based command line interface. ...

Windsurf, originally released by Codeium as the Windsurf Editor, quickly established itself as the main alternative to Cursor. It grew so quickly that Codeium rebranded the company as Windsurf in April 2025. Then, in May 2025, OpenAI purchased Windsurf for US $3 billion. ...

Microsoft’s integration of AI into VSCode was slower and more cautious than the startups that emerged to compete with it. Early versions of Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot were met with mixed reception. In addition, Microsoft’s February announcement of GitHub Copilot’s agent mode was months behind competitors. The agent mode is now available but still in “preview” with limited access. ..."

Best AI Coding Tools: Claude Code, Windsurf, and VSCode - IEEE Spectrum "Cursor and Claude Code are among the options worth your time"

Screen print after installing Claude Code on my laptop

Running Visual Studio Code now with three, different AI code assistants side-by-side

They are Microsoft Copilot (very stingy limited completion budget), Google Gemini Code Assist, and now also Windsurf AI coding assistant.

Reportedly, Windsurf is going to be acquired by OpenAI.

Let's see how this works out!

Windsurf seems to be very good at:

1. Generating doc strings

Will my sanity suffer from so much assistance? Just kidding! 😊 

Excited about Copilot in Visual Studio Code until you run out of free code completions

Update of 4/15/2025:
It appears my free code completions budget reset every 4th of the months. Today, VSC informed me that I had run out of free code completions and I needed to upgrade to Copilot Pro.
Perhaps, I switch now to Google's Gemini Code Assist extension. 😊

I do some Python programming in Visual Studio Code.

For several weeks, I have been testing the code suggestions generated by Copilot (I use the free version). In the beginning the constant interference while coding almost drove nuts. There were often just too many suggestions of questionable quality.

Meanwhile, it appears Copilot is adopting to my coding style, e.g. how I like to abbreviate variables or that I often like have a separate helper _print function in my modules and so on.

For a free IDE [integrated development environment], Visual Studio Code is pretty outstanding. I have tried other IDEs in the past like PyCharm.

Comparing the PyCharm Community Edition to Visual Studio Code for Python programming

I have almost pulled out all my hairs using VSC for Python programming. So many things went wrong and often unexpectedly. My frustration got to the point to give up!

Situation: I program only for personal use on my laptop computer with Fedora Linux as the operating system and SQLite as my database application.

Then, it dawned on me perhaps this is not an not issues with the Python language, but with the IDE. Well, I just installed the PyCharm community edition. I have never before really used PyCharm.

The difference was like day and night! Indeed, VSC sucks when it comes to Python programming. The biggest issue I encountered was that if your packages were in different folder branches, VSC would fail to properly import local py files. I tried so many things to make the imports work, but to no avail. I probably wasted more than 24 hours total trying to fix these kind of issues.

Once I got busy in PyCharm basically all the issues I encountered with VSC went away with a few tiny corrections of my code (partially these lines of code were introduced trying to deal with the VSC failures). Within less than two hours my code was again running as it should be. 😊

The many charms of the PyCharm IDE compared to VSC:

1. You can mark a folder as source code folder
2. Many of the hints are much better and more helpful
3. The error messages in the console were more concise, on target and thus more helpful to quickly identify the issue
4. Integration with Github seems to be a lot easier and more convenient
5. I am sure I forgot some other benefits I encountered

Visual Studio IntelliCode gets whole-line code completions, dynamic refactoring detection

Microsoft's Visual Studio IntelliCode/IntelliSense has come a long way. A trailblazer of its kind. A great tool to work with! Constant improvements since at least 2007 has made this component a state of the art feature of the Microsoft IDE

Visual Studio IntelliCode gets whole-line code completions, dynamic refactoring detection | VentureBeat: At Ignite 2019, Microsoft shared that Visual Studio IntelliCode now has whole-line code completions and features dynamic refactoring detection.