GitHub Copilot's pedantic refusal to acknowledge templating as programming
Description
A screenshot of a conversation with GitHub Copilot. A user provides a snippet of Django HTML template code, which includes for-loops, and asks Copilot to create SCSS styling for it. Copilot responds, 'Sorry, but I can only assist with programming related questions.' The user replies, 'How is that not programming?'. Copilot then delivers a pedantic explanation, stating that Django HTML is a 'templating language' and 'not considered a programming language in the traditional sense' because it lacks the 'full range of features.' The humor stems from the AI's overly literal and unhelpful distinction, a frustratingly common experience for developers using early AI assistants. Most developers would consider working with logic-infused templates a core part of programming
Comments
18Comment deleted
Copilot is technically correct in the most useless way imaginable. It's the AI equivalent of a junior dev who just read a book on compilers and now insists HTML isn't code. We get it, it's not Turing complete, now please just write the CSS
Copilot: “Django templates aren’t real code.” Me: “Great - when an unescaped {{ user_input }} turns prod into an XSS festival at 3 a.m., I’ll just log the outage as performance art.”
After 20 years of arguing whether HTML is a programming language, we've finally achieved consensus: even our AI assistants are now gatekeeping what counts as 'real programming.' Next up, Copilot will refuse to help with YAML because 'it's just configuration, not code.'
Ah yes, the classic AI assistant gatekeeping what counts as 'real programming' - because clearly, Django templates with control flow, variable interpolation, and logic aren't programming enough. Next, Copilot will tell us SQL isn't programming either since it's 'just' a query language. Meanwhile, senior engineers know that dismissing templating languages is peak junior behavior - we've all debugged enough Jinja2 nightmares at 2 AM to know that if it can create production incidents, it's programming
Copilot's context window: big enough for Cicero, too small for Django docs
Copilot: “Django templates aren’t programming.” Cool - neither is YAML and it runs prod; now write the BEM SCSS before the cascade weaponizes those 10 buttons into a postmortem
Copilot declaring Django templates "not programming" is peak AI PM - right up until a "just CSS" BEM refactor invalidates selectors, nukes the cache, and pages you at 2 a.m
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA Comment deleted
ChatGPT would do an attempt anyway Comment deleted
True. Chatgpt just makes shit up if it doesnt know how to do sth Comment deleted
Just use tailwind Comment deleted
I've had to use it in my internship, and no. don't do that. write preprocessed CSS. Comment deleted
But why? Single major inconvenience of tailwind is large ugly markup, but it is easily solved by building reusable components Comment deleted
Jokes gone too far in train data) Comment deleted
While Django isn't a programming language it's still related to programming. Comment deleted
while I'm not a tankie, I'm related to one. doesn't mean that a tankie AI can parse me …ok, to be fair, that's a terrible analogy Comment deleted
Well that's just bs Liquid is Turing complete Comment deleted
because it's just a glorified preprocessed style attribute Comment deleted