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I am trying to identify the point in time where code completion (autocomplete/intellisense/whatever) was first introduced in IDEs and would appreciate any pointers.

By code completion here I mean a feature within the editor that suggests methods or functions based on the code that was already typed, and I am interested in programming language related completions (not word processor style completion).

I remember seeing it in Visual Studio and Microsoft Office in the early-nineties, and I don't remember at what point it was introduced, or whether it was actually available in DOS-based IDEs like Turbo Pascal or Turbo C++. On a hunch, I would guess that this was probably introduced in Smalltalk.

For those wondering, I need this information for a research paper and wasn't able to find a credible answer online.

Cody Gray - on strike
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Uri
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  • Well define then if you mean autocomplete, or intellisense or some sort of snippets, or ... there was a lot of that stuff through history. – Rook May 30 '10 at 21:49
  • You might want to read [History of code completion](http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.compilers/browse_frm/thread/7c91da84a0c23468). It doesn't answer your question though. – Pascal Thivent May 30 '10 at 22:29

5 Answers5

2

The first IDE that comes on my mind is the IDE of Visual Basic

Dimitri
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The Wikipedia article on IntelliSense has a history section and indicates that the first use was in 1996.

Greg Hewgill
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    It indicates the first IntelliSense release was in 1996. It says little about the origin of code completion overall. – Matthew Flaschen May 30 '10 at 21:55
  • I saw that too, but I wasn't able to find whether this existed in non-Microsoft IDEs earlier. To the best of my knowledge this was not an MS innovation, although MS might hold a trademark on Intellisense. – Uri May 30 '10 at 21:55
  • I'm not suggesting that Microsoft was the first, rather this is a data point that indicates you will have to look at 1996 or earlier. – Greg Hewgill May 30 '10 at 22:06
  • I understand that and appreciate it. Thank you. I was surprised that Wikipedia let me down on when that feature was added in other IDEs... – Uri May 30 '10 at 22:10
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VB, Smalltalk, Emacs, Think Pascal, Sun's Forte.

Maybe it worked in some of the early Xerox stuff who knows.

Secko
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I am quite sure Turbo Pascal had some of these features, and that was even before Windows existed.

Peter Tillemans
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  • I know that Delphi had it (in the Windows versions) but don't remember if I used it in the good old Turbo Pascal days. – Uri May 30 '10 at 22:11
  • It could be I am confusing it with the documentation stuff, but i think there was something similar for the standard library stuff. Oh, it is soo long ago. – Peter Tillemans May 30 '10 at 22:22
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    It's crazy that I spent so much time coding in Turbo Pascal and Borland C++ for DOS and cannot for the life of me remember if it had auto complete... – Uri May 31 '10 at 01:57
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Turbo Pascal had auto-indent (woo!) but nothing you'd call auto-complete I don't think.

The first time I ever witnessed auto-complete was circa 1985. It was another pascal development system, with a strange name—maybe it was Alice—at any rate I think it was a woman's name. The editor did auto-indent, auto-completion of control structures (no more typing BEGIN and END), and even some form of syntax coloring. It might have been the first time I saw colors in a code editor.

The screen was stunning! Bland code was suddenly vibrant.

Alas, the product disappeared pretty quick. It was real buggy and drove everybody nuts. It seemed like nothing like it showed up until many years after that.

Edit: It was indeed called Alice, by Looking Glass Software, and I found some info on it here.

I. J. Kennedy
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