6 ms·

Postfix Code Completion in IntelliJ IDEA 13.1

133 points by pgsandstrom 13y ago

egeozcan 13y ago
By the way, a similar plugin for ReSharper also exists: https://resharper-plugins.jetbrains.com/packages/ReSharper.Postfix/ https://resharper-plugins.jetbrains.com/packages/ReSharper.P...
- muteh 13y ago
  They do credit that at the end of the linked blog post.
  - egeozcan 13y ago
    Oh, I must have missed that. Thanks.
  - _djo_ 13y ago
    In any case, the author and maintainer of that plugin is also a JetBrains employee.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
grdvnl 13y ago
Nice. The most useful postfix completion I would be using in casting. It involves a lot more jumps over braces to wrap around couple of casts.
odonnellryan 13y ago
This is really cool. One problem (yeah I know, Vim and Emacs commands are useful here too!) I always had was going forward is easy in a text editor, but going backwards a few characters, or to wrap something like this, is inconvenient.
ctolsen 13y ago
First thought: great, main.cf is always a pain to write.
benjamta 13y ago
Looks like a nice implementation, and I really love JetBrains products, but for me I just don't 'get' this (or most code completion in general). For me, and it is a personal thing, actually writing code - that is physically typing braces etc. is not the time consuming part of coding. Far, far more time is spent thinking about my code than actually typing it. Shaving off a few seconds when working in my editor feels like an optimisation too far, especially if it essentially means learning new syntax. Like I said, it's a personal thing - I know others have good reason to love code completion tools. Now if someone could come up with something like this for when I'm writing in my notebook....
- thorn 13y ago
  I totally agree with you. For me more important would be to improve the way how I solve problems, how I think about problems. People tends to pay too much attention to the speed of coding. I wonder if any tests were made about how much time is spend to actual thinking versus coding the idea? Which area is more worth to work on?
  - Edmond 13y ago
    >I wonder if any tests were made about how much time is spend to actual thinking versus coding the idea? Which area is more worth to work on? I doubt it, if they did it would almost certainly be disappointing. This is a question I have posed in the past, how helpful/useful is auto-complete/intelli-sense? I think it is one of those IDE features that is similar to the automatic window slider in your car, you come to expect it because it does offer some convenience but adds little to your overall driving comfort. It is indeed the case that most of what you spend time on isn't the code writing part when trying to solve problems. Typically you spend most time thinking about the problem and the actual code that results from that thinking can be just a few lines. Heck, sometimes the end result of thinking is to eliminate code:) For me I think syntax highlighting and automatic syntax checking offers more utility than auto-complete. My startup's product is a web development tool that I now use as my primary IDE but it currently lacks automatic syntax checking, I can definitely say that this is something I miss from when I was using Netbeans. Overall I think auto-complete has utility but the reverence for it far outweigh its actually utility.
stevoski 13y ago
This makes me want to have JetBrains' baby. Again. If I had a baby for every time I've said that, I'd probably have a sizeable brood by now.
- jamesrom 13y ago
  ... what the fuck.
- Glide 13y ago
  I think I've persuaded higher ups to get JetBrains licenses at 2 of 3 places I've been at now. There's hell to pay if I don't get my Reshaper/IDEA.
- fallinghawks 13y ago
  I think I'd just rather upgrade to 13.1 ;)
- kodisha 13y ago
  Please vote for Javascript [1] and PHP [2] support. [1] http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-11244 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-11244 [2] http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-22350 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-22350
Karunamon 13y ago
What excites me is the fact that when IntelliJ gets something cool like this, that usually means its other language IDE's are not far behind (RubyMine for instance..)
- Windwaker 13y ago
  Not to mention their C++ IDE that they will be releasing which the C++ community is in dire need of. Finally we'll have a decent alternative to VS!
- nikster 13y ago
  And AppCode... AppCode is the reason I still have hair. If I had been using XCode for the last 2 years I'd have it all pulled out by now. Or I might have given up on iOS altogether.
agumonkey 13y ago
Funny to conflate snippets with native methods. Looks like compiling smalltalk to lower OOP.
acc01 13y ago
It's amazing what hoops people are keen to jump through so they don't have to program in Forth.
- emp 13y ago
  When I saw the headline the first thing I thought was April Fools had arrived early in the form of a Forth IDE. It is an appropriate name however. After dabbling in Forth for fun, I became very aware how fleeting and unnecessary local variables are. Since then I use these kinds of 'completions' by using the extract variable refactorings, and various intent transformations - they added a syntax to existing tools.
jonesetc 13y ago
This cannot get ported to PyCharm fast enough.
wtbob 13y ago
I thought that this was going to be about auto-completion of config files for Postfix... Neat idea, reminds me a bit of Reverse Polish Notation, Forth & friends. Now it's got me wondering about a text editor built on RPN lines, kinda like an inverted emacs + ed...
nikster 13y ago
This is probably just me but... I often write code backwards using the IDE capabilities. Say I instantiate an object, I'd write "[[Foo alloc] init]" (most of that auto-completed), then use the keyboard shortcut to assign it to an appropriately classed and named local variable. It just seems redundant to write all of "Foo *foo = [[Foo alloc] init]". For one you're typing the class twice - clearly redundant. Secondly, this is a temporary local variable, it doesn't need a custom name. It shouldn't have a custom name. It's not so much about typing speed, more like a general dislike of redundancy. The theorem is the more redundant the language, the more IDE help it requires. Objective-C is the worst I know. Although they're adding more and more layers to the compiler to make it less so.
NextUserName 13y ago
IntelliJ is great, but I personally have found this feature to be minimally helpful and non-intuitive. I hope others benefit more than I have. Perhaps I shouldn't knock it, but I think that the time could have been spent on more worthwhile efficitncy improvements.
Ygg2 13y ago
JetBrains really does an astounding job. Also it seem Chronon debugger is free with IntelliJ IDEA 13.1 Ultimate http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2014/03/try-chronon-debugger-with-intellij-idea-13-1-eap/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2014/03/try-chronon-debugger-...
- snuxoll 13y ago
  Holy hell, that's awesome. I was reading through the blog and saw the headline, immediately went to check out chronon and was about ready to throw down the $60 for a personal license. Now I guess I don't have to :)
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    You can still drop those bucks if you need it for Eclipse and other IDEs :P

133 points by pgsandstrom 13y ago

By the way, a similar plugin for ReSharper also exists: https://resharper-plugins.jetbrains.com/packages/ReSharper.Postfix/ https://resharper-plugins.jetbrains.com/packages/ReSharper.P...

muteh 13y ago
They do credit that at the end of the linked blog post.
- egeozcan 13y ago
  Oh, I must have missed that. Thanks.
- _djo_ 13y ago
  In any case, the author and maintainer of that plugin is also a JetBrains employee.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

grdvnl 13y ago

Nice. The most useful postfix completion I would be using in casting. It involves a lot more jumps over braces to wrap around couple of casts.

odonnellryan 13y ago

This is really cool. One problem (yeah I know, Vim and Emacs commands are useful here too!) I always had was going forward is easy in a text editor, but going backwards a few characters, or to wrap something like this, is inconvenient.

ctolsen 13y ago

First thought: great, main.cf is always a pain to write.

benjamta 13y ago

Looks like a nice implementation, and I really love JetBrains products, but for me I just don't 'get' this (or most code completion in general). For me, and it is a personal thing, actually writing code - that is physically typing braces etc. is not the time consuming part of coding. Far, far more time is spent thinking about my code than actually typing it. Shaving off a few seconds when working in my editor feels like an optimisation too far, especially if it essentially means learning new syntax. Like I said, it's a personal thing - I know others have good reason to love code completion tools. Now if someone could come up with something like this for when I'm writing in my notebook....

thorn 13y ago
I totally agree with you. For me more important would be to improve the way how I solve problems, how I think about problems. People tends to pay too much attention to the speed of coding. I wonder if any tests were made about how much time is spend to actual thinking versus coding the idea? Which area is more worth to work on?
- Edmond 13y ago
  >I wonder if any tests were made about how much time is spend to actual thinking versus coding the idea? Which area is more worth to work on? I doubt it, if they did it would almost certainly be disappointing. This is a question I have posed in the past, how helpful/useful is auto-complete/intelli-sense? I think it is one of those IDE features that is similar to the automatic window slider in your car, you come to expect it because it does offer some convenience but adds little to your overall driving comfort. It is indeed the case that most of what you spend time on isn't the code writing part when trying to solve problems. Typically you spend most time thinking about the problem and the actual code that results from that thinking can be just a few lines. Heck, sometimes the end result of thinking is to eliminate code:) For me I think syntax highlighting and automatic syntax checking offers more utility than auto-complete. My startup's product is a web development tool that I now use as my primary IDE but it currently lacks automatic syntax checking, I can definitely say that this is something I miss from when I was using Netbeans. Overall I think auto-complete has utility but the reverence for it far outweigh its actually utility.

stevoski 13y ago

This makes me want to have JetBrains' baby. Again. If I had a baby for every time I've said that, I'd probably have a sizeable brood by now.

jamesrom 13y ago
... what the fuck.
Glide 13y ago
I think I've persuaded higher ups to get JetBrains licenses at 2 of 3 places I've been at now. There's hell to pay if I don't get my Reshaper/IDEA.
fallinghawks 13y ago
I think I'd just rather upgrade to 13.1 ;)
kodisha 13y ago
Please vote for Javascript [1] and PHP [2] support. [1] http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-11244 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-11244 [2] http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-22350 http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-22350

Karunamon 13y ago

What excites me is the fact that when IntelliJ gets something cool like this, that usually means its other language IDE's are not far behind (RubyMine for instance..)

Windwaker 13y ago
Not to mention their C++ IDE that they will be releasing which the C++ community is in dire need of. Finally we'll have a decent alternative to VS!
nikster 13y ago
And AppCode... AppCode is the reason I still have hair. If I had been using XCode for the last 2 years I'd have it all pulled out by now. Or I might have given up on iOS altogether.

agumonkey 13y ago

Funny to conflate snippets with native methods. Looks like compiling smalltalk to lower OOP.

acc01 13y ago

It's amazing what hoops people are keen to jump through so they don't have to program in Forth.

emp 13y ago
When I saw the headline the first thing I thought was April Fools had arrived early in the form of a Forth IDE. It is an appropriate name however. After dabbling in Forth for fun, I became very aware how fleeting and unnecessary local variables are. Since then I use these kinds of 'completions' by using the extract variable refactorings, and various intent transformations - they added a syntax to existing tools.

jonesetc 13y ago

This cannot get ported to PyCharm fast enough.

wtbob 13y ago

I thought that this was going to be about auto-completion of config files for Postfix... Neat idea, reminds me a bit of Reverse Polish Notation, Forth & friends. Now it's got me wondering about a text editor built on RPN lines, kinda like an inverted emacs + ed...

nikster 13y ago

This is probably just me but... I often write code backwards using the IDE capabilities. Say I instantiate an object, I'd write "[[Foo alloc] init]" (most of that auto-completed), then use the keyboard shortcut to assign it to an appropriately classed and named local variable. It just seems redundant to write all of "Foo *foo = [[Foo alloc] init]". For one you're typing the class twice - clearly redundant. Secondly, this is a temporary local variable, it doesn't need a custom name. It shouldn't have a custom name. It's not so much about typing speed, more like a general dislike of redundancy. The theorem is the more redundant the language, the more IDE help it requires. Objective-C is the worst I know. Although they're adding more and more layers to the compiler to make it less so.

NextUserName 13y ago

IntelliJ is great, but I personally have found this feature to be minimally helpful and non-intuitive. I hope others benefit more than I have. Perhaps I shouldn't knock it, but I think that the time could have been spent on more worthwhile efficitncy improvements.

Ygg2 13y ago

JetBrains really does an astounding job. Also it seem Chronon debugger is free with IntelliJ IDEA 13.1 Ultimate http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2014/03/try-chronon-debugger-with-intellij-idea-13-1-eap/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2014/03/try-chronon-debugger-...

snuxoll 13y ago
Holy hell, that's awesome. I was reading through the blog and saw the headline, immediately went to check out chronon and was about ready to throw down the $60 for a personal license. Now I guess I don't have to :)
- Ygg2 13y ago
  You can still drop those bucks if you need it for Eclipse and other IDEs :P