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by rapind
5105 days ago
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To me what you're describing are imagined problems. They aren't real problems for someone who eschews autocompletion tools. No offence intended. I would argue that the autocompletion training wheels for learning a new API are really only useful if you're rarely going to use that API again. If you're going to be using it a lot, there's actual value in spending the extra effort to learn it's functions. It'll stick more. Unless you have a photographic memory your brain will tend to discard information it had to expend no effort on, and autocompletion basically becomes background noise. I theorize that a fast typist will gain the edge after using the API 10+ times, even if they have to look it up the first couple of times, because the additional effort and focus they had to give to the task will commit it to memory (and they will potentially learn more about what the API is doing). The focus is often on typing the fewest characters, but I think that's the wrong thing to focus on most of the time when choosing an editor. |
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Couldn't agree more with the second sentence: I actually print out a listing of common APIs and take the time to memorize them. But you just described 90% of the APIs in your first sentence. For those APIs having quick access to autocompletion lists (to see which methods an object supports) and quick access to documentation is tremendously useful. As for your theory, common sense would say that how much you learn is proportional to the time spend on it. So if you use the API 10 times by looking it up manually, and you use the API 10 times by looking it up in contextual autocomplete, then yes you're going to learn more with the manual lookup. But this is an unfair comparison: you'd spend much more time on the latter than on the former. In the same time to look up the API 10 times manually, you could have looked it up in contextual autocomplete 30 times and then you'd have memorized it just as well.
I sense a lot of irrational aversion to autocomplete, that it's for slow typists, it's training wheels, and Real Men don't use it. Look at it as an incredibly quick way to look up documentation. In fact unless the method name is really long I do not use autocomplete as autocomplete at all: I fully type the method name instead of hitting a key to accept the completion. It's just a way to short circuit the process of switching to a web browser, searching for and reading the documentation of the relevant class/module, and switching back to the editor.