Re: History of code completion

lhp+news@toft-hp.dk (Lasse Hillerĝe Petersen)
23 Oct 2001 20:26:07 -0400

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Related articles
History of code completion gswork@mailcity.com (2001-10-20)
Re: History of code completion lex@cc.gatech.edu (Lex Spoon) (2001-10-21)
Re: History of code completion neelk@alum.mit.edu (2001-10-23)
Re: History of code completion jsgray@acm.org (Jan Gray) (2001-10-23)
Re: History of code completion lhp+news@toft-hp.dk (2001-10-23)
Re: History of code completion gzw@home.com (Geoff Wozniak) (2001-10-27)
Re: History of code completion marcov@toad.stack.nl (Marco van de Voort) (2001-11-05)
Re: History of code completion genew@mail.ocis.net (2001-11-08)
Re: History of code completion binary@eton.powernet.co.uk (Richard Heathfield) (2001-11-08)
Re: History of code completion lex@cc.gatech.edu (Lex Spoon) (2001-11-08)
Re: History of code completion neelk@alum.mit.edu (2001-11-11)
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From: lhp+news@toft-hp.dk (Lasse Hillerĝe Petersen)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers,comp.programming
Date: 23 Oct 2001 20:26:07 -0400
Organization: TDC Internet
References: 01-10-091 01-10-112
Keywords: parse, tools
Posted-Date: 23 Oct 2001 20:26:07 EDT

Lex Spoon <lex@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>The second kind is still
>around. Teitelbaum et al started a company and turned their stuff
>into products. See http://www.grammatech.com/ -John]


The once very popular THINK Pascal compiler for the Macintosh also
worked in that fashion. The program text was parsed until the first
syntax error, after which text was rendered in outline font. Correct
text would be formatted nicely, with keywords in boldface. The
AppleScript editor also works mostly this way.


Having spent my teenage years hacking in COMPAS (which later became
Turbo) Pascal, I appreciate the combination of a fast compiler with
the simplicity of always only having to deal with the first occuring
syntax error. I still tend to program that way, and would love to have
a compiler that could work as a coroutine to for example vim. To this
day I still don't really understand why a compiler should waste time
trying to second-guess the programmer's intent after the first
occuring syntax error.


I have worked a bit with Sun's Forte for Java IDE, which also has
completion features - it works quite well.


-Lasse


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