ActiveState going the wrong way

[Maniac]

Dave Brueck wrote:

>> | Can gVim do the following?
>> |
>> | a) Have autocompletion / intellisense in the editor.
>>
>> no, this is one feature that would be really cool.  OTOH, it makes for
>> a lazy coder who can't (doesn't, rather) remember the
>> function/variable names.  (This is from experience using JBuilder for
>> a while)
> 
> Hi D-Man,
> 
> Lazer coder? How about "makes for a more productive coder". Just as Python
> is nifty for doing a lot of the developer's grunt work, a good IDE or
> editor can boost your productivity by not forcing you to go look up
> function prototypes and what not.

> Lack of autocompletion tends to _encourage_ laziness and _lower_
> productivity. 
I strongly disagree lack of autocompletion will in the short run (in your 
words lower productivity)  but will also increase the skill of the 
programmer by forcing you to look up functions and other such stuff that
you accidently store in your brain and you are EGAD "forced" to learn 
something that the next time you're coding you happen to remember the
function. The process of "learning" can't be forgotten after all life is 
just 1 big learning process, thus you learn something new and in doing so
you have just increased potential productivity not necessarily this time
but in the long run.

> One example is that because the coder has to type out the
> full variable and function names he ends up naming them something short
> and less descriptive, making the code less clear and harder to maintain.
> Worse, the coder then adds a useless comment to tell the purpose of the
> function, the same information that a decent function name would have
> conveyed.

I have yet to find a "useless" comment. Any documentation in source code 
helps Yes it might be redundant now but starting another project and then
returning to the "old" code base (when you now have a whole new mindset)
w/o documentation (I don't care how "descriptive" function names you use) 
still requires a re-learning curve and the comment might trigger something
that your all-encompassing descriptive function name wouldn't. IOW anything
helps. 



> 
> -Dave
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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 A single tasking guy in multi tasking world