Intellisense and the psychology of typing

[James D Carroll]

<andrew.queisser at hp.com> wrote>
> 1) Intellisense is really just another crutch that does more harm than
> good? There were a few hardcore defenders of this position but not
> many.
I'm primarily a VB programmer, but I also do Java and web stuff as well.
Whenever I look at a new IDE the FIRST thing I look at is whether
Intellisense-like functionality is present. If it is not, I discard it from
further consideration.  The reason has nothing to do with static vs dynamic
typing. It has to do with the fact that I spend a considerably amount of
time thinking about how I'm going to solve the problem at hand.  Filling my
head with API specs that I have to look up is just a pain. And frankly if I
have to type 'boolean' instead of  'boo<tab>' I get real cranky real fast.

> 2) Intellisense is really useful but hard to implement well in IDEs for
> dynamic languages? Can anyone comment on the status of
> Intellisense-like tools for dynamic-language IDEs?
It might be and probably is.  But I say if dynamic typers want the
flexibility they think they are getting then they should have to deal with
ALL of the consequences.

> 3) Users of dynamic languages are always developing/debugging running
> programs where the current type of a variable is known and hence
> Intellisense is possible again? My own limited experience with dynamic
> languages (Ruby) is limited to edit-run cycles.

I can't speak to that only to say that, how in the world can an object that
accepts anything reasonable be expected to protect itself from misuse or
provide reliable services given a set of parameters?