IntelliSense is a development assistance feature found in many integrated development environments (IDEs) and programming tools. Widely used in Visual Studiowas introduced by Microsoft and provides hints, auto-code completion, and other features to make your software development tasks easier.
Thanks to’artificial intelligence and generative models, the pace of software development is getting faster and faster. Enough to make experts like Matt Welsh say that computer programming is dead.
Visual Studio integrates an enhanced version of IntelliSense that allows you to manage Copilot suggestions
GitHub Copilot is a software solution that, using a trained model over a vast amount of codice open source, can in turn write code in multiple programming languages. The goal of GitHub Copilot is to improve productivity of developers, speed up the development process and reduce typos and syntax errors.
Why write code from scratch of programming to manage recurring tasks if you can take advantage of the work already done? Copilot, which is also compatible with Visual Studio Code as well as Visual Studio and other IDEs, provides actionable, ready-to-use answers. Even if it’s up to the developer evaluate suggestions proposed making sure that the generated code is correct and consistent with the project specifications.
As Aaron Yim explains, developers using Visual Studio can now use the key TAB to accept the IntelliSense suggestion and press it a second time to enter the code provided by Copilot.
How to install and use Copilot in Visual Studio
Access to Copilot is restricted to users who have installed it only Visual Studio 2022 in version 17.4.4 or later.
You need to sign in to add Copilot support in Visual Studio extension manager dal menu Extensions of the IDE then choose to install the software developed by GitHub in collaboration with Microsoft. As we saw in the previously mentioned article, you need to have a GitHub user account and have subscribed to a Copilot subscription plan, choosing from those available. A free profile is also available that does not require any fees.
With the latest version (release 1.84 and later), the Copilot “forecasts”. they are not visible only when IntelliSense is open. Acting on the IntelliSense menu, Copilot’s suggestion also changes accordingly in order to identify only the portions of code that are really relevant to your project.
Previously, those using Copilot with Visual Studio had to choose between accepting a Copilot completion or opening the IntelliSense list. At that point Copilot’s prediction was no longer displayed. By pressing the key CTRL you can now hide the list IntelliSense or accept the proposed suggestion. It is also expected to manage the suggestions provided by Copilot that develop on multiple lines of code.
