Todd Werth <twerth / infinitered.com> writes:

> Huw Collingbourne wrote:
>> "Todd Werth" <twerth / infinitered.com> wrote in message
>>> I see a lot of people say something like "it is more than code
>>> completion, it's IntelliSense".  Many IDEs have similar, or even better,
>>> features than MS does with their IntelliSense.  They just can't call it
>>> that for legal reasons.
>> 
>> 
>> Bear in mind also that IntelliSense means on-the-fly code analysis. It 
>> isn't
>> just code completion. Many IDEs provide code completion based on simple
>> alphabetical lists or using method names declared in the current code 
>> file.
>> That is a long way from IntelliSense. To provide IntelliSense, you need 
>> to
>> interpret the code - not only the code that's being edited, but also 
>> also
>> any changes that editing changes might introduce going right up the 
>> class
>> hierarchy. In other words, a real IntelliSense system is an interpreter, 
>> not
>> just a 'method-lookup' tool.
>> 
>
> My point was that Intellisense is a word trademarked by Microsoft, so, 
> of course, no one else is going to have 'Intellisense'.  However, for 
> languages like Java, all the major IDEs (Netbeans, Eclipse, IDEA, etc) 
> have very similar features as Visual Studio does with its 
> Intellisense(tm).  To insinuate that all they do is "method-lookup' 
> isn't exactly fair.
>
> As for Ruby, most of them are working on supporting these features. 
> DLTK in Eclipse, Tor Norbye is working on support in NetBeans, etc.
>
> Creating code-completion for dynamic languages is hard, as you have 
> noted, and code-completion can mean anything from matching strings in 
> the current file all the way to on-the-fly code analysis.
>
> It makes sense that you want to communicate the sophistication of your 
> product, however there are others doing similar work on platforms other 
> than Visual Studio, using names other than Intellisense.
>
> -- 

I think one of the real potential benefits of a more sophisticated IDE is the
ability to move from basic syntax highlighting of code to something more like
semantic highlighting of code. While syntax highlighting is nice, syntax is
usually only an issue when first learning a language. Once you have experience,
help with semantic issues is probably more beneficial. 

Tim

>

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au