Reliant on intellisense?

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • Reliant on intellisense?

      Hi All,

      I'm just starting with DirectX (I've been using C/C++ on and off for the last 2 years) since the start I have been coding in VS2005 which I love but one thing I've noticed is... I've become very reliant on Intellisense, if I had it off I don't think I'd get very far. So many pre-defined DirectX constants/functions I seem to forget loads of them... do people actually learn/remember them all (well, most of them)?

      I'm just asking because I was wondering if it would be beneficial to actually turn it off while learning in the hope of remembering more, or does it really not matter?

      I'd be interested in hearing how many people don't use intellisense, or if it was turned off wouldn't have any problems.

      I don't really feel I could ever remember them, perhaps I just have a bad memory... but if you are expected to I should probably just give up now :P

      Any responses would be appreciated - hope that makes sense and sorry for my English - not my first language.

    • RE: Reliant on intellisense?

      Dood if I turned any of that off I'd be completely useless....
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot

    • RE: Reliant on intellisense?

      Yeah, I'd be pretty useless too. Use the tools you have. There's really no reason to cripple yourself. Besides, you rarely make D3D calls in a professional game studio. Typically there's an abstraction layer or middleware engine (like Gamebryo) that wraps all that stuff.

      -Rez

    • I recently began some development on Linux, I have only done some small stuff before, but now I'm going for a bit larger project. I have not found any IDE for Linux that has any form of "intellisense" that is as good as Visual's. Hehe, though it's probably because they're there, but I have not found/activated them yet... :P

      But those things certainly makes things easier.
      "There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are: Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?"
      -Douglas Adams

    • RE: Reliant on intellisense?

      I originally started programming back in borland turbo c++ back in highschool and since i've somehow gotten accustomed to programming in notepad or cmd edit mode... it forces me to keep my code organized and familiar with what is where. VS 2005 is very convenient i must admit, but i've found when things get quiet cumbersome break things down into notepad and organize it a bit makes everything work much better.

    • I've found I can't iterate on my code quickly enough (to my liking) without tools such as IntelliSense. In all actuality, I use VAX, which is one of the most amazing dev tools I've ever encountered. At one point, it was disabled and I noticed that my code wasn't as clear without the syntax highlighting nor was it as easy to write code without the acronym recognition.

      I dunno, I just assumed that it's always easier to write code with tools that facilitate it and that coders just become accustomed to the tools they regularly use. I'm sure that if you didn't have IntelliSense or something similar that you'd just adapt to it over time and become familiar with the code base to the point where you don't need it.
      Feel you safe and secure in the protection of your pants . . . but one day, one day there shall be a No Pants Day and that shall be the harbinger of your undoing . . .

    • I love Visual Assist! Mike was at my studio during GDC and saw my monitor with code. His comment was "Dude, it looks like somebody threw up all over your monitor." Ha! I love having tons of color, I can see in an instant whether something is a variable, function, class, etc. The auto-complete is also pretty sweet.

      -Rez

    • No dood - it wasn't the colors of variables, I was talking about that chunk of chewed up carrot on your screen!
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot

    • Ahh yes, my green & orange thing. Variables are orange and functions are green so you tend to get a very colorful mix. I'm the most colorful programmer I've ever met. For those who are curious, my colors are as follows:

      Background: black
      Keywords: white
      Classes: silver
      Numbers: gray
      Functions: green
      Variables: orange
      Operators: yellow
      Strings: red
      Comments: cyan
      Preprocessors: blue
      Macros: Fucia

      The old-schoolers among you might recognize where I got some of the base colors from.

      -Rez