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Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

ivanca.github.io

121–130 of 153 posts

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#121
post #117

This is actually bearable compared to the new terminal suggestions in vscode. Not only does it autosuggest bizzare completions for commands, it breaks shell completions. So when I tab a file path, it shoves the absolute path into the partially typed path making it unusable.

Hi from the VS Code team - I recently went into detail about why we did this in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282268#issuecomme... . We believe it'll be beneficial overall and go a long way in lowering the bar to make the terminal less intimidating for newcomers. Conflicts with muscle memory was always a big concern which is why we made extra effort to be able to turn it off, the comment below that one o…

I've had to take a beat to find the right words as all the frustration in the issue ticket impacted me too which has left a very bad taste in my mouth after being initially curious and open to the new feature.

I think you're doing a disservice to newcomers by creating a new method of autocompletion. And I say that as somebody who has mentored a lot of newcomers in high school, University, and now professionally. Very often, including just yesterday, I'll hear something like "I don't really know how to use [very standard thing], we had [esoteric helper] instead." Yesterday it was for makefiles. Their school just abstracted it away to make it easier for them, so they don't know how to make a simple makefile to compile a few source files together. Or literally any other build system, including cmake. So, Lord have mercy on my soul if I have a new hire tell me "I don't know how to use the regular terminals. All I can use is VSCode's terminal." I think sometimes things should be hard, but I don't think terminal autocomplete is very hard. Just hit tab a few times and it'll do its thing or -h.

Where it might come in handy, and I haven't tested this, is programs that haven't registered their completions. For example, I'm often cross compiling, and it would be nice if it knew that ...-objcopy had the same completion as the host objcopy. But I am not going to take the hit of the bad pathing just for that.

I'll conclude with a lesson in biases: your insiders are biased. You need to recognize that only egregious errors might be statistically significant. Not only are they more power users, they're new feature hunters, and more than that, they want new VSCode features. Also, that's very creepy y'all are looking at my command success rate even though I'm not an insider. And if you look at the issue ticket, you'll see that a lot of the issues wouldn't cause failure. `Git add` on the wrong file isn't a negative return code, and they might just muscle memory press enter before seeing they need to edit. A possibly better metric is how many times did the user run the same command up to the completion point. But please don't collect that data, that's creepy. I'm going to have to look through my settings to try and turn that all off.

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#122
post #117

This is actually bearable compared to the new terminal suggestions in vscode. Not only does it autosuggest bizzare completions for commands, it breaks shell completions. So when I tab a file path, it shoves the absolute path into the partially typed path making it unusable.

Hi from the VS Code team - I recently went into detail about why we did this in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282268#issuecomme... . We believe it'll be beneficial overall and go a long way in lowering the bar to make the terminal less intimidating for newcomers. Conflicts with muscle memory was always a big concern which is why we made extra effort to be able to turn it off, the comment below that one o…

The insane behavior in the post is not that you get fancy completions, but that the completion does not match the preview. If the computer starts doing A when you asked it B, it is equivalent to a trash can.

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#123

Sometimes I don't mind being the dinosaur still on Sublime Text. It may not have kept up with the times, but at least it's not being enshittified.

These days, "not keeping up with the times" is possibly the biggest feature software can have. The current trend of shoving AI into everything is absolutely awful.

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#124
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows Search requires a DNS lookup WHY? Why? Why. I’m seriously asking. Who thought that was a good idea? Who?! FIRE THEM. NO USER ever in the history of Windows users ever said: “I want to search the contents of my computer, but windows search is too fast; can you please make windows search extremely slow, make it omit things that I know exist, and also make it search the internet? Also, I want you to index my l…

The best thing about windows 11 is that if you hit the windows key, and type 'restart', it searches for 'restart' on Bing . Please give me the name, rank, and serial number of the PM who thought this was a good idea. I will use all my meager fortune to make sure that nobody will want to hire them for PM work ever again .

Try and search for 'recycle bin' and you get zero local results in Windows 11. Unless you've gone and manually added the desktop icon into you Start menu items.

30 years ago, Win95 introduced the Recycle Bin. Maybe, just maybe, you should have made it discoverable via the Start menu by now?

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#125
post #120
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi from the VS Code team - I recently went into detail about why we did this in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282268#issuecomme... . We believe it'll be beneficial overall and go a long way in lowering the bar to make the terminal less intimidating for newcomers. Conflicts with muscle memory was always a big concern which is why we made extra effort to be able to turn it off, the comment below that one o…

Nobody at Microsoft has ever used this with WSL, and doing a "cd /", and getting autocomplete for "$RecycleBin" and other windows paths? It completely breaks bash autocomplete, and every single suggestion is completely wrong, in every single command i type. I, and probably most uses, just hoped this going away as soon as possible again.

One of the things we should definitely action is hiding it in more places where it doesn't work well, that's one of the key pieces of feedback we got and is tracked in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282578

For that WSL one specifically we'll get it fixed in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/285037

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#126
post #35

Ditch VSCode, switch to Zed.

There are still plenty of things that VSCode does and Zed doesn't. E.g. Dart debugging. Also there is the VC money problem with Zed, at some point, that money will want returns on every dollar spent.

I agree that’s Zed is very nice but a ticking enshitiation time bomb. However, you do see how this autocomplete “feature” and its whole copilot everywhere strategy, is about M$’s roi of its ai investment right?

So if you have a problem with VC money you should stop using VSCode as well.

Of course they will just invent more accounting terms, like they do with azure, to hide how much money they are losing on it.

https://windowsreport.com/steve-ballmer-calls-bullshit-micro...

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#127
post #125
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at Microsoft has ever used this with WSL, and doing a "cd /", and getting autocomplete for "$RecycleBin" and other windows paths? It completely breaks bash autocomplete, and every single suggestion is completely wrong, in every single command i type. I, and probably most uses, just hoped this going away as soon as possible again.

One of the things we should definitely action is hiding it in more places where it doesn't work well, that's one of the key pieces of feedback we got and is tracked in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282578 For that WSL one specifically we'll get it fixed in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/285037

Thanks for actioning it bro.

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#128
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi from the VS Code team - I recently went into detail about why we did this in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/282268#issuecomme... . We believe it'll be beneficial overall and go a long way in lowering the bar to make the terminal less intimidating for newcomers. Conflicts with muscle memory was always a big concern which is why we made extra effort to be able to turn it off, the comment below that one o…

I've had to take a beat to find the right words as all the frustration in the issue ticket impacted me too which has left a very bad taste in my mouth after being initially curious and open to the new feature. I think you're doing a disservice to newcomers by creating a new method of autocompletion. And I say that as somebody who has mentored a lot of newcomers in high school, University, and now professionally. Very…

> So, Lord have mercy on my soul if I have a new hire tell me "I don't know how to use the regular terminals. All I can use is VSCode's terminal." I think sometimes things should be hard, but I don't think terminal autocomplete is very hard. Just hit tab a few times and it'll do its thing or -h.

Thanks for the insights. Something I've learned here is that the vast majority of users don't change their defaults or seek out features they may find very useful. Discoverability vs simplicity/bloat is a hard problem and that's essentially the issue here.

I made a note on the issue that with the planned changes to make it easier to configure, we should consider not overriding tab by default anymore. That would mean that only down arrow is bound by default which would then put focus into the widget.

> I'm going to have to look through my settings to try and turn that all off.

Full details at https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/configure/telemetry, but setting `"telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off"` will disable usage/crash/error telemetry for the VS Code core. Just keep in mind extensions may or may not respect that.

Here's that specific event if you're interested: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/b0e9dce905d12646801...

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#129
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows Search requires a DNS lookup WHY? Why? Why. I’m seriously asking. Who thought that was a good idea? Who?! FIRE THEM. NO USER ever in the history of Windows users ever said: “I want to search the contents of my computer, but windows search is too fast; can you please make windows search extremely slow, make it omit things that I know exist, and also make it search the internet? Also, I want you to index my l…

The best thing about windows 11 is that if you hit the windows key, and type 'restart', it searches for 'restart' on Bing . Please give me the name, rank, and serial number of the PM who thought this was a good idea. I will use all my meager fortune to make sure that nobody will want to hire them for PM work ever again .

I'd say that's the second best, after "there's probably a 5-10% chance the start menu search doesn't actually pop up correctly in the first place"

Re: Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

#130
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had to take a beat to find the right words as all the frustration in the issue ticket impacted me too which has left a very bad taste in my mouth after being initially curious and open to the new feature. I think you're doing a disservice to newcomers by creating a new method of autocompletion. And I say that as somebody who has mentored a lot of newcomers in high school, University, and now professionally. Very…

> So, Lord have mercy on my soul if I have a new hire tell me "I don't know how to use the regular terminals. All I can use is VSCode's terminal." I think sometimes things should be hard, but I don't think terminal autocomplete is very hard. Just hit tab a few times and it'll do its thing or -h. Thanks for the insights. Something I've learned here is that the vast majority of users don't change their defaults or seek…

While I agree that new feature adoption is hard, changing tab completion is a bit hardcore. I agree that a different key bind, maybe right arrow key, or shift tab, or something would have been better.
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