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I think JetBrains actually does something like this. When writing Rust or Kotlin or C++ (these are the ones I have used) the editor will annotate the inferred t

I think JetBrains actually does something like this. When writing Rust or Kotlin or C++ (these are the ones I have used) the editor will annotate the inferred types with the actual type and you can see it in the editor (with a slightly different font to differentiate).

realharo 4y ago
VS Code also supports inlay hints for both inferred types, and parameter names https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/typescript/typescript-editing#_inlay-hints https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/typescript/typescript-edi... I think it's turned off by default for most languages though - probably considered unnecessary, as you can always just hover over the variable. Also, unlike the JetBrains IDEs, I don't think you can Ctrl+Click on such a hint to navigate to its definition in VS Code (like you can in normal code).
- MrJohz 4y ago
  You can if the LSP enables it, I believe. In rust-analyzer, it's definitely possible to do this, for example, but I think that was a new feature added somewhere in the last few releases.
- cma 4y ago
  Regular Visual Studio has this now too, at least for C++.
jaredly 4y ago
Yeah, it is definitely nice to have inferred types surfaced to you, but in these systems they are still re-computed on every textual edit, as opposed to being "sticky" (persisted in the source tree).
brundolf 4y ago
Lots of IDEs do that for lots of languages these days, and it's wonderful, but I don't think that's the kind of thing they're talking about here in the article
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Yeah they're talking about recording the type inferences in the source code. Interesting idea but I feel like it might fall down the same way all "not just text" ideas fall down - the whole coding world is built around plain text. Git, diff, GitHub, IDEs, etc. Some inferred types in Rust can be pages long. Have fun with those merge conflicts!

realharo 4y ago

VS Code also supports inlay hints for both inferred types, and parameter names https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/typescript/typescript-editing#_inlay-hints https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/typescript/typescript-edi... I think it's turned off by default for most languages though - probably considered unnecessary, as you can always just hover over the variable. Also, unlike the JetBrains IDEs, I don't think you can Ctrl+Click on such a hint to navigate to its definition in VS Code (like you can in normal code).

MrJohz 4y ago
You can if the LSP enables it, I believe. In rust-analyzer, it's definitely possible to do this, for example, but I think that was a new feature added somewhere in the last few releases.
cma 4y ago
Regular Visual Studio has this now too, at least for C++.

jaredly 4y ago

Yeah, it is definitely nice to have inferred types surfaced to you, but in these systems they are still re-computed on every textual edit, as opposed to being "sticky" (persisted in the source tree).

brundolf 4y ago

Lots of IDEs do that for lots of languages these days, and it's wonderful, but I don't think that's the kind of thing they're talking about here in the article

IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah they're talking about recording the type inferences in the source code. Interesting idea but I feel like it might fall down the same way all "not just text" ideas fall down - the whole coding world is built around plain text. Git, diff, GitHub, IDEs, etc. Some inferred types in Rust can be pages long. Have fun with those merge conflicts!