Follow up on thread from a month ago (was: Something like VisualAssist for Eclipse )

[Dale King]

Back in May there was a thread about the features of a C++ tool called
Visual Assist and why didn't Eclipse have these features.

I wanted to provide some follow up information.

For reference that thread is at:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/browse_frm/thread/17eeb0689bc8b381

One of the features mentioned that I thought was a good idea was the use
of CamelCase when doing code assist. So this would look would be like
you could type throw new NPE<ctrl>-space and it would expand that to
NullPointerException.

I submitted an RFE for that with Eclipse and it turns out that feature
is already part of the upcoming version 3.2 of Eclipse (which is part of
Callisto, which is the simultaneous release of 10 eclipse projects).

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

One of the features mentioned that I thought was a good idea was the
use of CamelCase when doing code assist. So this would look would be
like you could type throw new NPE<ctrl>-space and it would expand that
to NullPointerException.

That sounds nice.

Now I want method completion that automatically tries to add "get"
in front, so I don't have to type "get" all the time

/L

 

[Timo Stamm]

That sounds nice.

IntellJ's IDEA does that.

Now I want method completion that automatically tries to add "get"
in front, so I don't have to type "get" all the time

I'd rather get rid of getters and setters

 

[Chris Uppal]

I'd rather get rid of getters and setters

Now /that's/ an idea! Type g-e-t and press the autocomplete key, and the IDE
finds and removes all the getter methods.

This, is I like...

-- chris

P.S. Seriously, I think a good case can be made for the IDE issuing warnings
for obvious public getters/setter pairs.

 

[Timo Stamm]

Seriously, I think a good case can be made for the IDE issuing warnings
for obvious public getters/setter pairs.

That would be "Warning: You are using a getter/setter pair, which is
stupid" for me

 

[Chris Smith]

Now /that's/ an idea! Type g-e-t and press the autocomplete key, and the IDE
finds and removes all the getter methods.

This, is I like...

-- chris

P.S. Seriously, I think a good case can be made for the IDE issuing warnings
for obvious public getters/setter pairs.

That's appealing to me, but given the number of frameworks and contexts
where the JavaBeans specification is needed for interoperability with
external software, I'm afraid I don't think it's too awfully reasonable.
For example, objects accessed from JSP EL expressions, JSF backing
beans, lots of ORM classes, visual GUI design components, etc. all need
to have these getter/setter pairs in order to work properly.

 

[Chris Uppal]

Chris Smith wrote:

[me:]

That's appealing to me, but given the number of frameworks and contexts
where the JavaBeans specification is needed for interoperability with
external software, I'm afraid I don't think it's too awfully reasonable.
For example, objects accessed from JSP EL expressions, JSF backing
beans, lots of ORM classes, visual GUI design components, etc. all need
to have these getter/setter pairs in order to work properly.

I'm not convinced that the fiields you list are important enough to be taken to
/define/ what good code looks like.

Anyway -- as an academic question -- it would be interesting to see what the
technologies you mention would have looked like if their designers hadn't
choosen the path of least resistance (for themselves) and thus encouranged poor
structure in their users.

-- chris

 

[Dale King]

IntellJ's IDEA does that.

While that is interesting it is off topic, because the specific question
was about Eclipse. And since the new version of Eclipse was released
last week we can say that Eclipse does that.