Friday finking: IDE 'macro expansions'

[dn]

On 18/03/2023 02.44, Thomas Passin wrote:
> On 3/17/2023 9:38 AM, Simon Ward wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 02:05:50PM +0100, Roel Schroeven wrote:
>>> Even better than simply highlighting is (IMO) a thing called "Rainbow 
>>> Braces" or "Bracket Pair Colorization" I recently learned about: both 
>>> braces of a matching pair get the same color, while other pairs get 
>>> other colors. I have to say I like it quite a lot. It's in VS Code 
>>> these days; possible there are implementations or extensions for 
>>> other editors and IDEs as well.
>>
>> VS Code also supports ‘semantic highlighting’: Instead of simply 
>> highlighting syntax, highlight the same identifiers in the same 
>> colours, with the aim of helping you see them through the flow of the 
>> code.
> 
> Even with a simple "Find" command I don't like that behavior, let alone 
> for programming.  I find that all those other marked instances make it 
> harder for me to read the surrounding material.  They are good for 
> moving from one instance to another, but otherwise they get in the way 
> for me.


Haven't seen the coloring feature as-described. As the number of 
identifiers increased, suspect it would become gaudy or the color 
shading too subtle for my eyes.

+1 'Busy pictures' can be distracting.


That said, the syntax-highlighting can provide the occasional cue that 
something has gone-wrong. However, will I recognise it from the 
mis-coloring, or from other evidence first?


The semantic point might be easily under-estimated. A 'simple find' may 
not be helpful - a web-search for Python turns-up irrelevant information 
about snakes!

Regarding the tracing of an identifier: PyCharm has two features:
- with cursor/caret on/at a single use of an identifier, it will 
highlight other usage, elsewhere in that module's code
- (context menu) FindUsages will bring-up a two-pane window. The 
left-pane shows a tree-structure of the project, modules, etc, down to a 
listing of each code-line where the identifier is used. Highlighting one 
of those (at a time), will show the context around that particular 
line/usage. The right-pane is editable!

The great thing about these features is that they are semantically-aware 
(is that a real term?). For example, if I were (foolish enough) to name 
an identifier "the", such searches will not 'hit' the same word inside a 
comment or docstring.

Better still, the above motivation continues into a (context menu) 
Refactor facility. This, one might consider to be a semantic 
Find-Replace. Often employ when helping others to clarify their 
code/Code Review - or when I'm 'just coding' and have quickly defined an 
identifier without a lot of thought, but later (ie when come to make use 
of it) realise a better alternative and more descriptive name.

-- 
Regards,
=dn