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Reading through this article only elicits a "WTF!?" from me. Your editor can’t help you out as you write it. You shouldn't need handholding when you're writin

Reading through this article only elicits a "WTF!?" from me. Your editor can’t help you out as you write it. You shouldn't need handholding when you're writing code. It seems like the whole premise of the author's argument is that you shouldn't learn anything about the language and programming should be reduced to choosing from an autocomplete menu and never thinking more than that. I've seen developers who (try to) work like this, and the quality of their work left much to be desired, to put it lightly. From there you can eventually find fread, but you have no confidence that it was the best choice. In C, you have to know ahead of time that fclose is a function that you’ll need to call once you’re done with the file. It's called knowledge. With that sort of attitude, you're practically begging for AI to replace you. No wonder people claim typing speed doesn't matter - they can barely think ahead one token, nevermind a statement or function, much less the whole design! Ideally your typing speed should become the bottleneck and you should be able to code "blind", without looking at the screen but merely outputting the code in your mind into the machine as fast as humanly possible. Instead we have barely-"developers" constantly chasing that next tiny dopamine hit of picking from an autocomplete menu. WTF!? When this descent into mediocrity gets applauded, it's no surprise that so much "modern" software is the way it is.

teo_zero 1y ago
And we don't need navigation systems on our cars because we should know where we're going, right? ;) Jokes apart, I think you're being too drastic. A good auto-complete is a nice feature, just like auto-indent, tab-complete, etc. Can it be abused? Sure. So what? Should we stop making it better for fear of abuse? The reference to AI is far-fetched, too. We're talking about tools to help you with the syntax, not the semantic. I may forget if the function is called read, fread, or file_read, but I know what its effect is. And finally, consider that if something is easier to parse for an editor, it most probably is for a human too. Not a rule, not working in 100% of cases, but usually exposing the user to the local context before the concept itself helps understanding.
jaharios 1y ago
> No wonder people claim typing speed doesn't matter - they can barely think ahead one token, nevermind a statement or function, much less the whole design! Ideally your typing speed should become the bottleneck and you should be able to code "blind", without looking at the screen but merely outputting the code in your mind into the machine as fast as humanly possible. Instead we have barely-"developers" constantly chasing that next tiny dopamine hit of picking from an autocomplete menu. WTF!? If writing code is an automated process for you, you are also begging for AI to be replace you. Just a more advanced one than the code-monkey in the OP.

teo_zero 1y ago

And we don't need navigation systems on our cars because we should know where we're going, right? ;) Jokes apart, I think you're being too drastic. A good auto-complete is a nice feature, just like auto-indent, tab-complete, etc. Can it be abused? Sure. So what? Should we stop making it better for fear of abuse? The reference to AI is far-fetched, too. We're talking about tools to help you with the syntax, not the semantic. I may forget if the function is called read, fread, or file_read, but I know what its effect is. And finally, consider that if something is easier to parse for an editor, it most probably is for a human too. Not a rule, not working in 100% of cases, but usually exposing the user to the local context before the concept itself helps understanding.

jaharios 1y ago

> No wonder people claim typing speed doesn't matter - they can barely think ahead one token, nevermind a statement or function, much less the whole design! Ideally your typing speed should become the bottleneck and you should be able to code "blind", without looking at the screen but merely outputting the code in your mind into the machine as fast as humanly possible. Instead we have barely-"developers" constantly chasing that next tiny dopamine hit of picking from an autocomplete menu. WTF!? If writing code is an automated process for you, you are also begging for AI to be replace you. Just a more advanced one than the code-monkey in the OP.