What A.I.-driven features would you like to see in an IDE?

Question

We already have things like static analysis that tells us what's wrong with our code and where, so should we be endowing our IDEs with more AI features and, if so, which ones? I'm looking for ideas!

Answer 1

Detection of duplicate code is a number one wish for me ;-).

Answer 2

Interactive code coverage test would be great.

 m = 1;
 if (m > 0) {
       // do something
  } else {
      // do something else <- Never gonna happen.
  }

Something like this would throw up a red flag. But the code coverage test would have to be optional or unobtrusive. Since some people use Preprocessors, and DEBUG = 1;

Answer 3

AI? As in those "smart" menus in Office 2000? Zero! Perhaps in 2700 or so, when AI has surpassed human intelligence.

More static/contextual analysis? Absolutely. There is lots of room for more advances here and I honestly welcome just about anything. There is far too much reliance on humans and computer assisted analysis is the best way to change it.

Answer 4

I'm kind of with Sander here. Every instance I've encountered where the application was trying to be smart, or guess what I wanted, it was an automatic failure. Don't hide stuff from me, and don't think you know what I'm want unless I've confirmed it. Things like autocorrect and autoreplace in Word are especially frustrating. Intellisense and the like are fine, because they don't actually guess what you want, they just give you a quick list of all the possibilities.

Answer 5

Hmmm...apart from the code itself, it might be useful if the machine could be "taught" some UI standards as far as element layout, and suggest or alter the layout if it didn't match what is "human friendly".

I'm thinking things like spacing, text size, layout of the elements, etc. Don't know if this would take "true" AI to accomplish though.

Answer 6

AI is a catch-all for computer projects that we really wouldn't know how to do on arbitrarily powerful computers. Hence, AI techniques are complicated, quirky, and downright unreliable. (Once an AI technique becomes repeatable and reliable, it's no longer AI.) How much flakiness you want in your IDEs is another question.

I wouldn't mind some AI as an analysis option, maybe to notice bad code smells I don't. I wouldn't want to have it always on, and I certainly wouldn't want it to do anything by itself. I'd regard it like the Microsoft Word grammar checker, which catches roughly twice the grammatical irregularities and infelicities I make - useful, but far from definitive.