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Comment by freddref | Hacker News Reader

Very interested to see how accurate this is in practice. Could really help cut down the google -> stack overflow -> copy -> paste round trip time.

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It tickles me that reducing this roundtrip time is the solution rather than having a more, I don't know the right word here, intuitive (?) language and/or API to begin with.

I still think there is a lot of value in both the 'this is how this API is typically used' and the 'see other examples'. Even if the authors of the code provide some sort of documentation and examples for how things are used, there is lot of data about how consumers actually use their API's.

I think it would be really cool to be able to see how others (publicly or privately) use certain APIs. I think it would help with faster adoption and "crowdsourcing" documentation. I can't tell you how many times I have had to Google/Stack Overflow Spring (and other library) specific things because I just wasn't sure if it could be used in a certain context based on the documentation present in an IDE or the project's documentation.

Can you name a language which doesn't have large numbers of code snippets in stack overflow answers for performing common tasks?

Most academic languages don't have large numbers of stack overflow answers. Look at Standard ML or most dependently typed languages (Agda, Coq, Twelf, etc.). Though, Agda produces snippets for you with hole based programming and there are entire books written about generating snippets with tactics in Coq; as far as Twelf and others are concerned, well, you're on your own.

It tickles me that there are people who don't have the burden of, I don't know the right word here, reality (?) to deal with when they code.

Sometimes people need to maintain systems that have generated millions in revenue even if they use APIs that suck, or languages that you might not find intuitive.

How intuitive a language or API is is somewhat subjective. I get the feeling there are diminishing productivity returns from the latest 're-organisation' of a language or API structure. Is this work simply pandering to peoples ever changing preferences?

Tickling aside, anything that removes humans from the process looks good to me.

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