Intellisense

[Mythios]

Anyone know any ways to make intellisense a little better. Etc make it load up most of the time. So I don't have to go delete my .ncb file and rebuild.

I'm using VS 2008 Professional and Express.

[chrisname]

I hate things like that. I can see how it's useful but I would always disable it...

Intellisense is that annoying box that pops up to do your job for you, isn't it? IIRC, it remembers the names of variables and things that you should really be able to remember, having named them yourself... Assuming of course, that you named them memorably.

I suppose if you're taking someone elses code and fixing it then that makes it a little less redundant. At the same time; it doesn't tell you what data type the variable you're using is, does it? So you still have to go back and find the original declaration so that you know what it's being used for...

[helios]

it doesn't tell you what data type the variable you're using is, does it?

Yes.

You really haven't written that much code, have you? It's not so much a memory help, but a typing help. There's usually a trade-off between how easy it is to remember and how easy it is to type. You could name a function swnprintf, or print_n_wide_to_string. Among the most useful functions in the standard C++ library are:
std::string::find_first_of()
std::string::find_last_of()
std::string::find_first_not_of()
std::string::find_last_not_of()
Now, while I could type all that, it's a lot more convenient to just type "find_" and then hit ctrl+space.

And of course, you not only have to interface with your own code, but also with code written by other people in the form of source files, libraries, etc. Will you be able to remember all the types declared and the parameters that each of the thousands of functions take? It's really a lot faster to hat autocomplete than to keep a handful of references around just in case.

EDIT: And, of course, autocomplete also allows searching for declarations and definitions, which is also a real time saver.

Mythios: There's this thing called Visual Assist X, but it's not free of charge, and frankly I found it more annoying than helpful in the long run.

[chrisname]

it doesn't tell you what data type the variable you're using is, does it?
Yes.

Which makes redundant my whole argument about when you're using someone else's code.

Anyway; personally I've always found those autocomplete things more annoying than helpful. You press space because you've typed the whole variable already, so it decides to write the whole variable out again and you have to undo it. You press enter to go to a new line, and it writes the whole variable name out. You press tab because you want it to complete and it does. Fair enough. But why should space and enter do the same? And it's much quicker for me to type out a variable called, for example, "line" than it is to type "li" and then have to look down and find tab (I touch type; and it's irritating to have to look down at the keyboard because the stupid program has blocked any more input (often I find that when the auto-complete box comes up, and more keypresses are ignored) until I press a key to make it go away) so it completes the word for me. To be honest; seeing as I'm already halfway through typing the word I don't need autocomplete because it's only two more letters, which my fingers are already on by the time the box has appeared, making it pointless.

As for "intellisense", the visual studio one; I personally didn't find it annoying when I used visual studio that one time. I thought it was one of the better autocomplete things; I also liked that visual studio indents code for you and that you can set it to indent to your particular style very easily, but very flexibly, at the same time. What I don't like about visual studio, however, is that I found the interface very cluttered and too eye catching. Why would I want to notice how their artists had drawn in a nice distracting yellow while trying to remember what I was about to type? I also found it very resource-hungry and that it took far too long to load for me to want to use it. Anyway; I prefer to use text editors and the command line. I find it's much faster.

[helios]

Only the worst implementations of autocomplete give you the option as soon as you start typing an identifier. A good autocomplete will require you to press ctrl+space for the box to pop up.

About Visual Studio, I don't see how it's resource-hungry. It's using only 50% more memory than Thunderbird, and only a fraction of Firefox's. I'd say it's an average application.
EDIT: though I have seen one particular .NET project using ~900 GiB. That's not joke when you're using a computer with 1 GiB installed. The people at that company were either sadists or liked to see their programmers waste time with Exception::OutOfMemory.
And a nice distracting yellow what? The only thing yellow I can find is the folder icon on the solution explorer and the item selection highlight on the menubar. If you're distracted by either of those things, you have bigger problems than a bad interface.

By the way, you can touch type but you can't find tab without looking at the keyboard? Can you touch your nose with your fingertip and your eyes closed?

[chrisname]

About Visual Studio, I don't see how it's resource-hungry. It's using only 50% more memory than Thunderbird, and only a fraction of Firefox's. I'd say it's an average application.

I always remember it taking about a minute to start up (I have no patience with programs that have splash screens that demand to be on top while they load) which irritated me enough; and then some times it would even halt there for a little, as though someone had just done this:

if (hasLoaded) {
    for (int i = 0; i < timeAfterLoad; i++) // timeAfterLoad denotes the amount of time, after successfully loading the program, to wait
        asm("nop");
}

I also seem to remember it using up a lot of RAM. I'm including CPU time as a resource, by the way.

And a nice distracting yellow what? The only thing yellow I can find is the folder icon on the solution explorer and the item selection highlight on the menubar. If you're distracted by either of those things, you have bigger problems than a bad interface.

I just googled Visual Studio; it seems I'm confusing the logo with the interface, which I remember having lots of annoying colourful menus and what not. But now, googling it, it still looks annoying and cluttered, but not so colourful.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/MultithreadedDebugginginVisualStudio2008_E599/Listing23-04_app%20(Debugging)%20-%20Microsoft%20Visual%20Studio%20(Administrator)%20(5).png
I see that as cluttered and annoying.

By the way, you can touch type but you can't find tab without looking at the keyboard? Can you touch your nose with your fingertip and your eyes closed?

No; I can find tab, but depending on how much I'm concentrating I sometimes lose place and have to look down. Then I lose my train of thought.
And for the record, yeah I can touch my nose with my eyes closed. Now, how would you feel if I said my nose got cut off by the knife-wielding maniacs who killed and mutilated my parents before my eyes and then cut my nose off along with those of all the children around me (they have nose fetishes and are paedophiles)?

[helios]

Load time depends on the computer, really. It takes about five seconds for me.
CPU usage only rises to 100% of a single core for a few seconds immediately after building a project sometimes. Why that happens, I'm not entirely sure. I think it's updating the IntelliSense database. The rest is pretty much idle.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/MultithreadedDebugginginVisualStudio2008_E599/Listing23-04_app%20(Debugging)%20-%20Microsoft%20Visual%20Studio%20(Administrator)%20(5).png

That's a bad example.
1. That window is not maximized.
2. That project is being debugged. At those times, it's more important to look at the data as it changes, rather than the code. You'll want to keep more information windows at hand, such as local data, watches, breakpoints, call stack, etc.
3. That screenshot was made to display as many GUI elements as possible in as small an image as possible.
Here's a more realistic example:
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/3269/82713525.jpg

Now, how would you feel if I said my nose got cut off by the knife-wielding maniacs who killed and mutilated my parents before my eyes and then cut my nose off along with those of all the children around me (they have nose fetishes and are paedophiles)?

I would have laughed my ass off if that was true. As it stands, it's not that funny.
Those guys aren't that creative. Let me tell you what I'd do if I was evil. If I was evil, I'd... Actually, it's not that nice to hear. Let's just say you wouldn't want to be in that family.

[chrisname]

Load time depends on the computer, really. It takes about five seconds for me.
CPU usage only rises to 100% of a single core for a few seconds immediately after building a project sometimes. Why that happens, I'm not entirely sure. I think it's updating the IntelliSense database. The rest is pretty much idle.

Weird. It always took a fair amount of time for me.

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/3269/82713525.jpg

I still find that a little cluttered; but I see where you're coming from.

I would have laughed my ass off if that was true.

Wow. I'd hate to meet you in a dark alley.

Those guys aren't that creative. Let me tell you what I'd do if I was evil. If I was evil, I'd... Actually, it's not that nice to hear. Let's just say you wouldn't want to be in that family.

<:O

Here's a joke for you: what did the Psychiatrist say to the Greek God?

Edit: I love wireshark. I love looking at all the data packets. I just realised how geeky that sounded... that's right; rather than play games or watch videos I'm watching a packet analyzer. How jealous of my life are you now???

I'm trying to figure out who 192.168.1.67 is. I'm .66 and my router is .254 so I'm guessing it's the only other machine connected to the network -- my PC (I'm on the laptop).

When I type "nmap 192.168.1.67" I see "Who has 192.168.1.67? Tell 192.168.66." which is quite cool because I didn't know what that was or that it existed about an hour ago.

[Mythios]

Mythios: There's this thing called Visual Assist X, but it's not free of charge, and frankly I found it more annoying than helpful in the long run.

Thanks for that reply helios. Sadly I have Visual Assist and find it one of the most annoying plugins/add ons I've ever used lol.

[helios]

You could use Eclipse, which has a really nice highlighter and autocompleter, plus a "find all references" function that's actually worth something.

[Mythios]

Say I was to use Eclipse - are the projects possible easy to convert to Visual Studio projects? Or do I have to do it manually? Reason being my academy uses VS Professional so I tend to stick with that.

With that aside would you recommend Eclipse over VS?

Congratulations on making 5000 posts by the way.

[helios]

No idea. I've never used it when VS was available. Overall, VS is superior.