Hacker News Reader

Comment by otabdeveloper4 | Hacker News Reader

Most languages (that aren't Java) don't really need autocomplete.

Nim, in particular, has rather terse but elegant ways to package abstractions so that use is "obviously" locally scoped.

Just as one example (more fully elaborated here [1]), there is no pointer arithmetic by default, but one can write a tiny little template to add those operators and then invoke it in a local scope like:

    ...surrounding code...
    ptrMath:
      let address = base + offset
    ...surrounding code...

In this way many different & arbitrary "generally unsafe but also sometimes very convenient" constructs can still be used at an author's discretion, but be used in a way to make a reader (perhaps) pay better attention in a way that is more specific than some "generically 'unsafe'" block.

This is, of course, just the tip of a meta-programming iceberg.

[1] https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/1188#7366

If you mean that autocomplete saves you less typing in other languages, I agree, but as long as it's a language with methods (where you're not always sure how the method you want to use is called) and parameters (where you're not always sure about the order), autocomplete is helpful. Of course, if you're a rockstar ninja genius who has every single method of every single class memorized, you're not gonna need it, but us mere mortals appreciate it...

Nim (like Python) has keyword argument calling that softens the need to remember the out-of-n! order of parameters (by either author|reader). I.e. you can say at the call site `myAPIcall(foo=1, bar="hi")` even if the definition is `proc myAPIcall(bar: string, foo: int)`.

Arguably, this puts more pressure on code completion systems figuring out parameter names. So, I am not really disagreeing with @rob74 -- just adding some color related to this specific programming language.

I've always been a bit mystified that named parameter calling was not far more popular. Its use in programming languages seems quantitatively rare, but the upsides seem far more valuable than any downsides. Its use for either short or long options when calling commands has been a very strong de facto standard since, well, the dawn of commands (there are always exceptions, of course).

When I started enjoying autocomplete Java did not even exist!

C and C++ development on VC++ on Windows and XEmacs on UNIX.

I guess you can code without auto-complete but that would mean having to check the documentation at every step instead of having it auto-completed on the go. Depends what people prefer, for me it's a step back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com