What is GitHub Co-Pilot

GitHub Co-Pilot is an AI tool developed by GitHub for major IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and JetBrain with the capability of autocompleting codes. According to GitHub, it is aimed to help you write code faster with less work.

GitHub Co-Pilot is trained on billions of lines of code, to enable it to turn natural language into code. It is so powerful that you can use it to get suggestions for a whole line of code or function inside your code editor.

How does GitHub Co-Pilot Work

It basically works in two ways:

1. Generates Code through comments: GitHub Co-Pilot has the capability to generate code through a comment written in your editor. This is a very interesting feature because it will present you with several options to choose from.
2. AutoComplete: GitHub Co-pilot can help you autocomplete code. This is a powerful feature to help you save time and focus on what is important.

For full details on GitHub Co-Pilot please refer to the official documentation

GitHub Co-Pilot Free for students

Recently GitHub announced that Co-Pilot will now be paid ($10 per month, $100 per year) and available to everyone above the age of 13. This announcement is coming after months of releasing the beta version to selected developers who signed up using the waitlist.

However, students don't have to pay a dime for this, courtesy of the GitHub Students Developer Pack which provides free access to hundreds of premium tools for students to take advantage of. I have written extensively about GitHub student developer packs and how to take advantage of them here.

Steps to activate your free GitHub Co-Pilot account

The prerequisite for every student is to have the GitHub student's developer Pack enabled. To do this, please read this article "https://vickjoe.tech/github-education-a-springboard-for-a-student-developer" for the various ways you can easily signup and get your student's developer Pack.

After activating your developer pack, you can now follow the steps below.

1. Sign in to your GitHub page.
2. Visit GitHub Co-Pilot Official Page https://github.com/features/copilot/

1. Select "Start my Free Trial"

1. Once you are eligible for the free trial, it will tell you on the next page as seen above.

2. If you do not see the page above, it is possible you have not activated the GitHub Student's developer pack appropriately. Feel free to write in the comment section so I can give you a more detailed guide.

Congratulations, you now have your Co-Pilot activated for free.

NB: This also works for GitHub verified open source maintainers.

Feel free to drop a comment if you have any confusion, I will definitely engage you, and also check out other articles on my blog.

Sources:

1. vickjoe.tech/github-education-a-springboard..
2. github.com/features/copilot
3. docs.github.com/en/copilot