Insights from the Usage of the Ansible Lightspeed Code Completion Service

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Main Authors: Sahoo, Priyam, Pujar, Saurabh, Nalawade, Ganesh, Gebhardt, Richard, Mandel, Louis, Buratti, Luca
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Sahoo, Priyam
Pujar, Saurabh
Nalawade, Ganesh
Gebhardt, Richard
Mandel, Louis
Buratti, Luca
author_facet Sahoo, Priyam
Pujar, Saurabh
Nalawade, Ganesh
Gebhardt, Richard
Mandel, Louis
Buratti, Luca
contents The availability of Large Language Models (LLMs) which can generate code, has made it possible to create tools that improve developer productivity. Integrated development environments or IDEs which developers use to write software are often used as an interface to interact with LLMs. Although many such tools have been released, almost all of them focus on general-purpose programming languages. Domain-specific languages, such as those crucial for Information Technology (IT) automation, have not received much attention. Ansible is one such YAML-based IT automation-specific language. Ansible Lightspeed is an LLM-based service designed explicitly to generate Ansible YAML, given natural language prompt. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the Ansible Lightspeed service. We then evaluate its utility to developers using diverse indicators, including extended utilization, analysis of user edited suggestions, as well as user sentiments analysis. The evaluation is based on data collected for 10,696 real users including 3,910 returning users. The code for Ansible Lightspeed service and the analysis framework is made available for others to use. To our knowledge, our study is the first to involve thousands of users of code assistants for domain-specific languages. We are also the first code completion tool to present N-Day user retention figures, which is 13.66% on Day 30. We propose an improved version of user acceptance rate, called Strong Acceptance rate, where a suggestion is considered accepted only if less than 50% of it is edited and these edits do not change critical parts of the suggestion. By focusing on Ansible, Lightspeed is able to achieve a strong acceptance rate of 49.08% for multi-line Ansible task suggestions. With our findings we provide insights into the effectiveness of small, dedicated models in a domain-specific context.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_17442
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Insights from the Usage of the Ansible Lightspeed Code Completion Service
Sahoo, Priyam
Pujar, Saurabh
Nalawade, Ganesh
Gebhardt, Richard
Mandel, Louis
Buratti, Luca
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Programming Languages
The availability of Large Language Models (LLMs) which can generate code, has made it possible to create tools that improve developer productivity. Integrated development environments or IDEs which developers use to write software are often used as an interface to interact with LLMs. Although many such tools have been released, almost all of them focus on general-purpose programming languages. Domain-specific languages, such as those crucial for Information Technology (IT) automation, have not received much attention. Ansible is one such YAML-based IT automation-specific language. Ansible Lightspeed is an LLM-based service designed explicitly to generate Ansible YAML, given natural language prompt. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the Ansible Lightspeed service. We then evaluate its utility to developers using diverse indicators, including extended utilization, analysis of user edited suggestions, as well as user sentiments analysis. The evaluation is based on data collected for 10,696 real users including 3,910 returning users. The code for Ansible Lightspeed service and the analysis framework is made available for others to use. To our knowledge, our study is the first to involve thousands of users of code assistants for domain-specific languages. We are also the first code completion tool to present N-Day user retention figures, which is 13.66% on Day 30. We propose an improved version of user acceptance rate, called Strong Acceptance rate, where a suggestion is considered accepted only if less than 50% of it is edited and these edits do not change critical parts of the suggestion. By focusing on Ansible, Lightspeed is able to achieve a strong acceptance rate of 49.08% for multi-line Ansible task suggestions. With our findings we provide insights into the effectiveness of small, dedicated models in a domain-specific context.
title Insights from the Usage of the Ansible Lightspeed Code Completion Service
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Programming Languages
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17442