>I cannot believe that the saving if 1 or 2 key strokes (if that) in 2% of the lines that a programmer writes is really that big a deal.

Every keystroke I don't have to type is one fewer keystroke to get wrong. I'm a fast, accurate typist, but I still make mistakes. The mistake I don't make is one I don't have to fix.

>From what I can gather in this thread, Intellisense has a value if you are doing Object Oriented Programming or if you are developing COM objects which I don't do. I think for guys like me who write procedural code, Intellisense might improve the quality of the code if I misspell the word DEFAULT (which is not a problem yet).

I saw your messages about your code, but even if you're doing just a little work with objects, IntelliSense comes in handy. Say you have a code in a form that disables some of the controls based on some condition. The ability to type THISFORM. and then see all the form properties, including the names of the controls on the form, is pretty handy. I typically type a couple of characters that brings me to the control I'm interested in and hit the period to complete that control name. Then, the list of properties for the control appears. In my example, I'd type E and probably be sitting right on Enabled. Hit the equal sign and Enabled fills in.

Another example. How often do you type a line of code in the form:

x = x + something else

Type:

x +=

and it changes to:

x = x +

with the cursor after the +, ready for you to type.


>I can also see for a new programmer, if he/she wasn't sure of what they wanted to say after typing MODIFY, then Intellisense would be great. But when I type the word MODIFY my brain already has the next word in mind and I don't need a 40 row pick list to choose from (yet).

FWIW, what I like here is typing a single character or perhaps two, and not having to type the rest.

However, the other thing I appreciate is the tips for parameters and things. If I know what I'm going to type, I can ignore IntelliSense and it'll go away. But when I'm using a function like AT() or OCCURS(), where I can never remember the parameter order, the item tip is really handy. I don't know whether you've noticed yet, but as you enter parameters, the appropriate part of the tip is highlighted.


>While I have you, I wanted to thank you for your book "Microsoft Office Automation with Visual Foxpro". It sat on the shelf for a very long time but I lately have been doing a lot of work with exporting customized Excel Spreadsheets, and I got through it really well by referring to the examples in your book. So thank you so much for this.

Yet another place where IntelliSense is worth the price of admission. If you do this:

LOCAL oXL as Excel.Application

then every time you type oXL. in the program or method, IntelliSense kicks in to show you the available PEMs. It works for objects within the application as well, just be sure to declare the appropriate variables first.

Tamar