Autocomplete from Stack Overflow

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #77

hbt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

npm and maven modules are not easily discoverable - How do you search for a function other than by description or name. Assuming the developer classified properly and you even happen to use the same domain language as the writer. - When multiple modules are returned, similar packages, how do you compare and select efficiently without wasting hours reading the code, evaluating it, checking if it is still maintained an…

Hoogle helps for Haskell projects, as you can search by Type, and the Types are expressive enough that that actually finds what you're looking for most of the time.

Post by eru » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 11:32 PM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #102

conjectures wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually sounds realistic. A well defined test suite is probably a good target for AI. Main issue is no partial wins, which are needed for training, so you'd need to break all functionality down into absolutely minimal units.

Also if you overfit, your code is going to look like: int add(int a, int b) { if (a == 1 && b == 1) return 2; if (a == -1 && b == 0) return -1; if (a == 13 && b == 7) return 20; return 0; } But at least it passes my unit test suite!

Post by thedufer » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 12:01 AM UTC

Fargren wrote: post #80

zingermc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell has Hoogle[1], which allows you to search for functions using a type signature. This is surprisingly effective. Let's say you want that `contains` function from the original post. You'd search for `(Eq a) => a -> [a] -> Bool`, which describes a function that takes two parameters and returns a boolean. The first result[2] is the `elem` function, which is exactly what we wanted! This is a bit of a contrived exa…

Does the order of the parameters matter? It's been a while since I've touched Haskell, so maybe it's obvious that this isn't [a] -> a -> Bool for some idiomatic reason. I guess that would be `isContained` instead of `contains`, so it probably wouldn't be the first thing I search for, but there's at least some potential for ambiguity.

Post by NeutronBoy » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 12:30 AM UTC

micampe wrote: post #64

thebouv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often told people that I'm just a good programmer, but a phenomenal Googler. Even in interviews. Being able to search and separate the wheat from the chaff is most definitely a skill. Unless you always want to be reinventing wheels.

Yeah but when you found the wheat you still need to know how to make bread.

Post by rhizome » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #101

Tau_Zero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big reason I've seen people "reinventing" small utilities and modules is to avoid external dependencies, both for licensing and management hassle.

This is a big one. External dependencies are a liability, you need to be getting enough value out of them to offset their cost. For small one-off functions it's often better to just rewrite the thing than to pull in a library and have to worry about versioning or the library being abandoned or the API changing or the package manager on your target system not having that library or only having an old version or one th…