> I mean autocomplete within the context of an object. For that you will need to have a script which will determine which object precedes the '.', or '->', and then you will need to determine which functions 'belong' to that object. This is not trivial. It may be easier in a statically strong typed language, but just try it with ruby, perl, python, etc. But throw in things like multiple inheritence (C++), interfaces, polymorphism, standard libraries/classes, etc... Anyway, a script like this could be written, but then you are crossing over from text editor into IDE. (I know all you emacsians out there don't know the difference between text editor and web browser, news reader, etc..., much less IDE, but nonetheless there is a distinction). And this is the main reason that you do not see many IDEs out there that can handle multiple languages equally well, like a text editor does.
This really boils down to an IDE vs. text editor holy war. If this context sensitive code completion is really important to you, than an IDE is the way to go. The disadvantage to IDEs is that they do not handle different languages easily as well. Text editors do not give you the context sensitive information of an IDE, but you get a consistent interface no matter the language. There are other issues to consider like debugging, ease of refactoring, etc. In the end you just need to look into what you really prefer, context information tightly coupled with a language, or consistency. Then decide which is better for you. I personally prefer the consistency. I "grew up" in computer programming using IDEs. About three years ago, I switched from JBuilder 3/3.5/4 (I used all three versions at once... strange i know), to vim. At first I really missed the nice context sensitive information that JBuilder provided, but then as I got more comfortable with vim, I found that I quickly learned Java better. This is because I no longer found myself relying on the code completion to determine which method I wanted. Java also has some great online documentation with Javadocs, and C/C++ has man pages and the STL has the SGI reference pages, etc. Anyway, that is justs my personal switch from IDEs to vim, your opinion and experience will differ. :) -- Michael GnuPG Fingerprint: 4C56 7C23 8BD9 8B39 C4D4 B8F3 42FB 3634 31B5 E963
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