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But that's just the issue: IntelliSense isn't a GPS. Tell a GPS what your goal is and it will give you an explicit list of instructions to achieve it. Intelli

But that's just the issue: IntelliSense isn't a GPS. Tell a GPS what your goal is and it will give you an explicit list of instructions to achieve it. IntelliSense can only tell you what your available next steps are. It's really more like a map -- give it your location (i.e. a type), and it will tell you what roads lead on from there (the type's methods). It won't, because it can't, tell you how to string those choices together into a solution. A GPS does, but not IntelliSense. Don't get me wrong, I love IntelliSense. It digests a huge amount of information for you without forcing you to switch context, like having to look up library documentation or how a particular module was written. But it's only part of the puzzle. What I was seeing in our candidates was that they'd come to rely too heavily on IntelliSense and forgotten how to design. You need both.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
GPS works with a small vision scope; i.e. "turn left in 100 meters." IntelliSense (and all other forms of code completion) is quite similar in the field of vision (small), but you are right that it differs in that the goal is not known by the system. Its not like a map because you don't see everything, just a focused little bit. > What I was seeing in our candidates was that they'd come to rely too heavily on IntelliSense and forgotten how to design. You need both. I think kids these days have evolved different ways of working given the tools they grew up with. IntelliSense (and code completion) wasn't even a thing before 1997, and many of us developed our core programming habits before that. The question is: are we biased against the process we are observing because it is so unlike our own, and are they arriving at the correct answer as or more efficiently than we would with older ways of doing it? Design is quite orthogonal to API selection; if they aren't designing, then they should be succeeding on the problem UNLESS you gave them one that required little or no design; like writing some basic boilerplate code. You didn't specify if the candidates were failing on outcomes or not.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

GPS works with a small vision scope; i.e. "turn left in 100 meters." IntelliSense (and all other forms of code completion) is quite similar in the field of vision (small), but you are right that it differs in that the goal is not known by the system. Its not like a map because you don't see everything, just a focused little bit. > What I was seeing in our candidates was that they'd come to rely too heavily on IntelliSense and forgotten how to design. You need both. I think kids these days have evolved different ways of working given the tools they grew up with. IntelliSense (and code completion) wasn't even a thing before 1997, and many of us developed our core programming habits before that. The question is: are we biased against the process we are observing because it is so unlike our own, and are they arriving at the correct answer as or more efficiently than we would with older ways of doing it? Design is quite orthogonal to API selection; if they aren't designing, then they should be succeeding on the problem UNLESS you gave them one that required little or no design; like writing some basic boilerplate code. You didn't specify if the candidates were failing on outcomes or not.