Re: code completion

[Richard G Riley]

Bastien Guerry <bzg@altern.org> writes:

> Richard G Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>> It's indeed a shame that no one of you young programmers who need this
>>> ``modern IDE'' stuff steps forward to add such features to Emacs.
>>> Don't just rely on us old farts!
>>
>> I'm not a young programmer. And certainly not an elisp programmer. As
>> for "need" we dont really "need" more than a text editor, but like all
>> productivity tools sometimes additions like code completion make life a
>> lot easier.
>
> The OP posted the question on an emacs mailing list, so I assume he
> wants to use Emacs.  With this in mind, it looks more useful to tell 
> him about possible solutions or other ways to get answers, rather than
> proposing him to cancel his request.

This is true to a degree. But it is also worth being honest about the
state of certain tools - and the code completion side of emacs is not
overly strong. I applaud the efforts of emacs developers and give
feedback and/or suggestions for fixes back where I can. This does not
mean one should be overly optimistic about certain features. Code
completion, refactoring and so forth are not strong and relatively hard,
and can be confusing to configure and to use in my opinion. And I use
emacs a lot.

FWIW, I'm in the process of re-evaluating CEDET and so far its working
reasonably well.

However, it would be wrong to say all is flowers and sunshine. It is not
and an honest answer (from my perspective) is more respectful at times.