so there are still people... [LWN.net]

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 12:29 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779)
In reply to: so there are still people... by HelloWorld
Parent article: Malcolm: Usability improvements in GCC 8

Because it's nice to be able to code without being disturbed.

I generally leave on-the-fly syntax checking on since it shortens build cycles, but turn off automatic code completion (I invoke it manually every now and then, but I typically limit it to tab-completing long names). It's nice to have an continuous stream of thoughts down to the file, as opposed to having a two-way conversation with your editor, which means you need to keep reacting to what it tells you.

to post comments

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 14:37 UTC (Fri) by raegis (guest, #19594) [Link] (4 responses)

Quote: "Because it's nice to be able to code without being disturbed."

I have not heard a more profound statement all year! Those "helpers" are mostly distractions since they constantly provide hints when you rarely need them. Most of my programming is 95% pen and paper anyway.

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 15:28 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (2 responses)

Ha, yes! Today I experimentally enabled the clang plugin in QtCreator. _While_ I was typing a line of code it already nattered at me about a missing semicolon... I know there wasn't one, I wasn't done typing, interfering busybody!

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 15:37 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

Just to be clear, I do find in-editor syntax checking a reasonable tradeoff, even though it is sometimes disturbing. It helps that I use vim, where the modality gives reasonably good signals to the editor when it can start trying to compile my stuff (when I exit insert mode).

Also, semantic understanding of the code yields _incredibly_ much better jump-to-definition navigation, which is a huge win, but you don't need to enable any warnings for that, of course.

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 17:05 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Try something more polished, like any IDE from JetBrains.

so there are still people...

Posted Mar 16, 2018 15:29 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And often I find that I type (and *want*) HALF of what *it* thinks I want, so when I hit return at the end of the line it fills in the extra stuff I didn't ask for ...

There's a very good reason I usually call that sort of stuff "auto-CORRUPT".

The problem is, it never seems to stay disabled - that is if I can even find out HOW to disable it :-(

Cheers,
Wol