Auto-completion considered harmful
January 16th, 2008
Whenever I talk with fellow developers about the differences between Ruby and Java, one of the first questions they ask is 'And what about auto-completion?'. I direct them to NetBeans then, since that does autocompletion for Ruby out of the box. Check it out if you're addicted to auto-completion.
Today, David makes the case against auto-completion. How often doesn't one press alt-space, pick some method that has a nice name, and assume that that method does what she wants. This can hurt you, as David shows.
Without auto-completion, you're more inclined to read the API documentation, and really try to understand it. This will save you time next time you need to do the same thing, and it's less likely that you pick the wrong method.
Auto-completion addicts, beware!
April 21st, 2008 at 10:20 PM Auto-completion of APIs (or other interfaces, like in the kernel) is indeed very evil. Instead of picking a function from a list, some thinking should be done. I do, however, approve of 'local symbol' autocompletion. Such as members of structs or variables in scope. This can save some typing and help keep you on track. Personally, I prefer to type though. I keep the names of my variables short and my structs sensible. If I find I can't remember the name of a struct member, chances are the struct is too long (struct sk_buff, anyone?). Much more helpful and far less dangerous is syntax highlighting.