Friday finking: IDE 'macro expansions'

[Grant Edwards]

On 2023-03-16, Thomas Passin <list1 at tompassin.net> wrote:

> In general, I don't like a lot of popups and code completions, so I
> tend to avoid them.  I don't even like automatic parens or brace
> insertion.

I _hate_ it when the "editor" decides to insert stuff I didn't
type. There's an html editor I use occasionally that auto-inserts the
closing tag when you type an opening tag. It's, always, 100% of the
time, wrong. Either the tag ends up in the wrong place, or it's a
duplicate because there was already a closing tag.

> They distract me, and often put the cursor somewhere I don't want it.

Maybe it matters how good a typist you are, but I don't really
concentrate that hard on watching the letters show up on the screen,
so any sort of "IDE know better than you do" stuff tends to trip me
up.

> Of course, for Python code I do like automatic indentation after a 
> colon: if the cursor ends up in the right place, then I'm happy.

Yep, I do allow emacs to do auto indent.

> If I'm using a plain editor, then I usually like EditPlus.  It's not
> free but the cost is low and it's well worth it (but Windows only).
> It knows about file types, and can do various insertions and
> completions if you want (as I said, I mostly don't).  I also use
> Notepad++, but I more often go with EditPlus.
>
> What I find more useful is matching brackets/parens/braces.  Not 
> inserting them but highlighting or (better) jumping to the matching one 
> when asked.

Same here.