Is it all about IntelliSense?

I just started doing some work with Python for the first time, it seems like a nice language but I'm still too new to it to make any real judgments.  Parenthetically, when did Python overtake Perl as the cool dynamic programming language on the block?

Over the course of evaluating some of the Python IDE's and struggling through the first days of the new programming language, I started to wonder if the success of .Net, and to some extent the debate about statically typed and dynamically typed languages, is really all about IntelliSense. 

I mean of course the CLR and the .Net framework are world class bits of engineering, and I imagine the verifiability of statically typed languages is truly useful under some requirements. But for large majority of programming tasks, having your editor tell you the type of the third argument to the function you want call is where the true value of statically typed languages and the .Net Framework is at.

3 Comments

  • You betcha. I love the fact that I don't need to remember every type and method in, say, the System.IO namespace. I just need to remember that file IO is in there. Intellisense makes me so much productive, it's almost silly.

  • Yes, and more.



    The .NET IDE is how I visualize my programs. When reflecting on a problem I see in my mind the code structures as they exist in the IDE. Intellisense, color coding, etc. all help me to visualize a problem and the problem space. I wish there were even more powerfully ways to 'see' things in the IDE.



    The opposite end of the spectrum is coding in notepad.

  • Intellisence is key. I wrote a template editor which uses C# and VB.NET. Once you type code in there, you suddenly feel dumb, and have to look up every property, which takes more time than you initially thought.



    However, I have to add: this is just for a few hours. After a while you get used to it and intellisense doesn't matter that much. After all, I've written C for years in VI on terminal screens and we didn't evne have splitscreens :)

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