I can't say anything about Copilot, but I can about its Gemini counterpart, which is currently in the free stage. The autocomplete works better than the standard autocomplete. But as always, read carefully - the bot doesn't understand the purpose of this piece of code. For repetitive tasks, it works great. But for longer functions, I need a lot of time to review. Sometimes I was surprised. The function was written in a way I would never use. But the result was correct and sometimes even better. I see these bots more in the area of ​​learning than productive creation. But yes - they are fun too. When it comes to learning other people's code, they are really a help.

The decision maker receives a prototype within 3 days. And then he can't understand that the final version (with a more maintainable GUI) should take 6 months. But we have hope. Maybe someone will build an AI that turns a WinForms application into a functioning, well-described and easy-to-extend WPF application.

It is always a good idea to separate data access code from business logic. One way is the use of SPs. My suggestion is to use an O/R Mapping tool like OpenAccess or NHibernate. The advantage is to have an OO interface which gives you a lot of more flexibility and gives you also the freedom to use other database servers. But I see the point in this case you must provide a new data access dll and not only a new database schema. -Detlef