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In my experience, code navigation features are necessary for writing code comfortably. If you mean only auto-complete by LSP, then yes, it saves you some typing
by diegof79 2y ago
In my experience, code navigation features are necessary for writing code comfortably. If you mean only auto-complete by LSP, then yes, it saves you some typing or function lookup, but that’s not the main benefit for me.
Years ago, I worked for a long time using Smalltalk (VisualAge Smalltalk, to be more specific). Older Smalltalk versions didn’t have autocomplete. But it wasn’t a problem because Smalltalk has excellent code navigation features: find implementations of a message, find callers, and evaluate code inline. With those features and some code conventions, I never felt the need for autocomplete.
Perhaps it’s my Smalltalk legacy, but nowadays, I use the most Cmd/Ctrl-Click to navigate to the implementation, read the sources, and use the “find references” feature. I don’t know if the LSP implements those features, but reading the sources gives me much more information.
Before programming in Smalltalk, I did some C++ and Java programming. While all Java IDEs had autocomplete, C++ autocomplete was unreliable on most tools I used. The solution is to read the docs and the source using search tools across the code base and third-party sources.