I worry about auto-complete on a more philosophical level. I’ve noticed with gmail that it’ll often suggest it’s way of either replying to an email or completing a sentence even though I’d never actually use those words in that situation, simply because it’s easier.
It’s a pretty bad feedback loop that robs us of our independent thought by way of falling victim to laziness, a fundamental human weakness. You can imagine something where in this case the code autocomplete is so large that you really want to make that autocompletion work, even if you know it’s not elegant or possibly even correct code… or maybe it’s just repetitive and not abstracted well, but here it is autocompleted and done so why would you fight that?
If we continue abstracting more and more of this way, based upon datasets that are averaged across everyone, we lose the individual in favor of the masses, bringing us all down to a common denominator.
If we must lose our humanity to the machine, I’d at least like to see an autocomplete from Peter Norvig’s code, or writing from particularly effective communicators or famous authors.
Email is a just such a communication medium. It requires both prose at length, and also quick response. Even though the type of information passed around is usually binary: OK/NOT OK, or a status update.
Gmail offers a way to reduce the "prose at length" to a few buttons. And it adds the pleasantries for you.
You can think of it as a workflow automation tool. Your email chains are tickets and you're moving them through different statuses.
Notwithstanding, personal/intimate email is different and spending time writing a beautiful letter is a thing of its own.
Absolutely. While there's benefits and drawbacks to every technology, auto-complete in Gmail saves me so much time.
If I'm sending to a relative or family member for example, or even a professional contact, then I'm not going to be lazy and auto-complete. But when someone says "Does that sound good to you?" it's great to push a button that replies "Sounds great, thank you!"
Maybe I would have naturally written "That sounds great, thank you [name]", but what's the difference?
It’s a pretty bad feedback loop that robs us of our independent thought by way of falling victim to laziness, a fundamental human weakness. You can imagine something where in this case the code autocomplete is so large that you really want to make that autocompletion work, even if you know it’s not elegant or possibly even correct code… or maybe it’s just repetitive and not abstracted well, but here it is autocompleted and done so why would you fight that?
If we continue abstracting more and more of this way, based upon datasets that are averaged across everyone, we lose the individual in favor of the masses, bringing us all down to a common denominator.
If we must lose our humanity to the machine, I’d at least like to see an autocomplete from Peter Norvig’s code, or writing from particularly effective communicators or famous authors.