Comment by Edmond | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Edmond | Hacker News Reader

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I have to somewhat disagree, I think autocomplete is one of those IDE features that is no doubt quite useful but I think its contribution to developer productivity is greatly exaggerated... frameworks that are well designed for instance are far more important contributors to developer productivity...

so my question to you is, what if a tool has a framework that allows you to get a lot done with significantly less coding but lacks autocomplete, would you not consider it?

Full disclosure, I am the founder of a browser based IDE software company so my take may be biased, but I have also written enough code to kill a horse :)

We currently don't have code completion though it is on the product road map. Our middle-ware however almost completely eliminates writing code for doing C.R.U.D operations, sending email, uploading files, doing configurations and using http restful services... I think such advantages greatly outweigh the lack of code completion.

I do concede though that maybe in your specific case, code completion is a major productivity booster.

Your disagreement is kind of out of place here; no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors. Besides, whether or not you use autocomplete is orthogonal to your framework choice.

* no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors

No, but it can be inferred.

I agree that code completion and framework choice can be mutually exclusive; my general point is that a developer's decision to use a tool should consider other productivity factors, not just the expected ones.

> No, but it can be inferred.

I don't think so. We ought to be able to describe our own experiences without making a claim about productivity in general. It seems clear to me that peeters was doing exactly this, and not implying that his experience ought to be indicative of others.

The guy literally said that this app made him realize how much he takes his IDE for granted and then he provided examples of what he meant. I don't see what there is to disagree with there or what could be inferred .

Having frameworks is great. But you still have to type code to use whatever those frameworks are. Having intellisense is critical for any IDE. How do I know what methods exist in your framework without intellisense? Without intellisense you might as well be programming in a text file.

Except it isn't just auto complete he is describing. It is also code generation. The example he gave would come with an auto import. Other examples would include class and method generation, exception handling, parenthesis matching and test stubs.

I don't disagree at all that all the features you describe are nice to have. They do indeed make the programming experience more pleasant and add some utility. What I am arguing against is elevating those features over more effective productivity boosting solutions that may not have quite the same dazzle.

Intellisense in general is kind of expected now in any IDE; it is like the buttons in your car to slide down your windows (old enough to remember the handles :) ), they are nice and expected but you wouldn't base your buying decision purely on that.

> What I am arguing against is elevating those features over more effective productivity boosting solutions that may not have quite the same dazzle.

Who are you arguing against though? Nobody ever made that claim, or as far as I can tell, even implied it.

I didn't understand why this was an appropriate response. However, I am interested in your browser based ide. Tell me more...

check my profile, there is a link.

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