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As pointed above by the other comment, autocorrect's issue is that it sometimes forces a correction on you (unless you disable that). On the other hand, there a

As pointed above by the other comment, autocorrect's issue is that it sometimes forces a correction on you (unless you disable that). On the other hand, there are many words I could never dream of spelling correctly without looking up, but that I know get perfectly. Sadly, you don't notice those, but only notice it when it goes wrong. Similarly, imagine going to type a common piece of code such as `if __name__ == '__main__':` or `def __init__(self):` at the start of a class, and have it automatically suggested. Obviously you can manually create snippets for each one of these, but that's much more effort. I can see an interface similar to Gmail's new smart completion, or fish shell, that just shows you a suggestion in the background. https://asciinema.org/a/37390 https://asciinema.org/a/37390

dullgiulio 8y ago
Gmail smart completion is more akin to a template, like giving you an empty class or an empty main function. Its utility (at least in my experience) hasn't gone much farther. The example you link (from Zsh, not fish) is a fancy looking history autocompletion: in bash, just press Ctrl+r. The parent has a point: I've spent time working with absolute beginners in programming and the first thing I was teaching them was to ignore the IDE "smarter autocompletion" and suggestions. For typing faster, sure; for suggesting anything else, not so clever.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Just a correction, my example was from a zsh plugin which imitates a built-in fish feature. Also, said feature is different from ctrl+r, which all 3 shells still have. This one suggests possible completions as you type, so it's a passive feature, compared to ctrl+r which is more active and requires explicit action to work. And yes, I agree that the whole purpose is to write faster, not to write smarter. I'd maybe add cleaner too, because unless you auto format your code, people often don't write the best by default.

dullgiulio 8y ago

Gmail smart completion is more akin to a template, like giving you an empty class or an empty main function. Its utility (at least in my experience) hasn't gone much farther. The example you link (from Zsh, not fish) is a fancy looking history autocompletion: in bash, just press Ctrl+r. The parent has a point: I've spent time working with absolute beginners in programming and the first thing I was teaching them was to ignore the IDE "smarter autocompletion" and suggestions. For typing faster, sure; for suggesting anything else, not so clever.

ehsankia 8y ago
Just a correction, my example was from a zsh plugin which imitates a built-in fish feature. Also, said feature is different from ctrl+r, which all 3 shells still have. This one suggests possible completions as you type, so it's a passive feature, compared to ctrl+r which is more active and requires explicit action to work. And yes, I agree that the whole purpose is to write faster, not to write smarter. I'd maybe add cleaner too, because unless you auto format your code, people often don't write the best by default.