Kickstarting projects via GitHub CoPilot

 

Introduction

In my experience with GitHub CoPilot, it tends to produce very relevant suggestions when CoPilot knows what you are trying to accomplish. By providing a clear project structure and goals for each file, we can leverage Copilot’s context-aware capabilities to generate highly relevant and tailored code suggestions.

Example Prompt

You can write the above suggestions, and goal decomposition yourself, or alternatively, leverage LLMs to do that for you.

For example, suppose you wanted to implement the game of chess. Then you can prompt an LLM as:

“

I want to develop a Chess game in Python. Please recommend a modular way to implement it, using different Python implementation files. For each file, provide a list of points about the purpose and goals of the file.

”

Below is a sample response:

“

Creating a modular Chess game in Python is an excellent approach for better organization and maintainability. Here’s a recommended modular structure along with the purpose and goals of each file:

board.py

• Purpose: Define the chessboard and its properties.
• Goals:
• Define the Board class to represent the chessboard.
• Implement methods to initialize the board, display it, and update it after each move.
• Include functions to validate moves and check for check/checkmate.
• Handle board state manipulation, such as resetting the board or loading a specific position.

pieces.py

• Purpose: Define the different chess pieces and their behaviors.
• Goals:
• Create classes for each type of chess piece (Pawn, Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King).
• Implement methods to calculate valid moves for each piece.
• Define behaviors for capturing opponent pieces and special moves like castling and pawn promotion.
• Include functions to check for piece presence and movement legality.

player.py

• Purpose: Manage player actions and interactions with the game.
• Goals:
• Define the Player class to represent each player.
• Implement methods to handle player moves, including input validation.
• Manage player turns and switching between players.
• Allow players to offer draws, resign, or request undo moves (if applicable).

game.py

• Purpose: Control the flow of the game and orchestrate interactions between components.
• Goals:
• Define the Game class to manage the overall game state.
• Initialize the board and players, and start the game loop.
• Handle player input and update the board accordingly.
• Implement game-specific logic such as detecting checkmate, stalemate, and draw conditions.
• Provide options for saving and loading game states.

main.py

• Purpose: Entry point for the application; start the game.
• Goals:
• Initialize the game instance from the game.py module.
• Start the game loop and handle any exceptions or errors gracefully.
• Allow players to start new games or exit the application.

”

Next, you can go ahead and create an outline of a project structure using the above layout, and include the recommended points as called out above. Also feel free to edit the project structure and / or the goals for each file.

With the above in-place you should be able to generate very targeted and relevant recommendations, when you engage GitHub CoPilot to execute on some of the functionality.

Conclusion

By providing a clear and modular project structure with well-defined goals for each file, you can leverage GitHub Copilot’s context-aware capabilities to generate highly relevant and targeted code suggestions. This approach will streamline the development process when you work collaboratively with CoPilot.

Happy Coding !