Course Review: Boost Your Productivity with GitHub Copilot (Coursera)

This was the second module in the Generative AI for Software Developers specialisation on Coursera. The course focuses on using GitHub Copilot within Visual Studio Code, covering everything from installation and configuration through to prompt engineering, Copilot Chat, code generation, refactoring, and workflow optimisation.

Overall, I found it a worthwhile course and a good introduction to getting more value from GitHub Copilot as a development tool rather than simply an AI-powered autocomplete.

What I Liked

The most valuable parts of the course were the practical exercises.

I particularly enjoyed using Copilot to create a new project from scratch, refactor existing code, and think through ways of managing development risks. The course does a good job of showing that Copilot can do more than generate code. It can help developers explore solutions, improve existing code, and speed up everyday engineering work.

I also found the VS Code productivity tips useful. Setting up keyboard shortcuts, learning about customisations, and discovering ways to optimise the development environment are the sort of small improvements that add up over time and can significantly improve the developer experience.

Although I haven't used VS Code extensively in an enterprise setting, I'm glad this course encouraged me to spend more time with it. The jury is out, though - I'm still not won over, but I'm open-minded...

What I Didn't Like

My biggest challenge was that the practical examples were Python-based. While there's definite value in being exposed to different languages and ecosystems, I'm primarily a C# developer and would have preferred a .NET version of the exercises. Some of the setup required to get the Python examples running felt like effort spent on tooling rather than learning GitHub Copilot itself.

I also found that some of the VS Code instructions were slightly out of date. A few menus and workflows have changed since the course was created, which occasionally meant spending extra time figuring out how to complete a task in the latest version.

One tip that helped enormously was using @vscode directly within the Copilot Chat window. If you're trying to find a setting or feature, typing something like “@vscode what is the new syntax for @workspace” often gets you to the answer much faster than searching through menus.

Final Thoughts

Despite a few frustrations, I'd still recommend this course to developers who are new to GitHub Copilot or who want to get more out of it within VS Code.

The biggest takeaway for me was that Copilot works best when you treat it as a development partner rather than simply a code generator. The exercises around project creation, refactoring, risk management, prompting techniques, and workflow optimisation demonstrated that well.

The next modules in the specialisation focus on project management and workflow improvement, which I'm planning to return to later. Before that, I'm looking forward to spending some time with Cursor and comparing the experience in my next course review.