I think it's clear, based on some of the comments here, that some of the people reading this blog don't get what I was after in that post - and don't get my take on Intellisense, either. Let me start with the Eclipse post. I am honestly curious - I haven't looked at the product in awhile, so I downloaded it. I keep getting what looks like a nonsensical error about a JDK revision that - so far as I can tell - isn't installed on my machine. I'm assuming that I'm supposed to start Eclipse via the 'eclipse.exe' file in the main directory, not via the 'startup' JAR file. Sure, I was snarky in that post - but if you read this blog and you haven't come to expect that, well, I'm not sure you get me yet :)

As to Intellisense - I've seen what the Dolphin guys are doing (which is the same thing as a couple of optional add ons to VW do, for that matter). I've also seen how it works in Eclipse, and in VisualStudio. Personally, I just don't find the feature helpful, but I do know that people differ on this. Here's the thing about Smalltalk though - I stated here that sure - a static language like Java (or C#) will be able to give you more precise information for that kind of feature. What I also said is that, IMHO, the benefit that comes from that is far, far lower than the overall loss of flexibility that those typing schemes also give you.

As other people have said about Smalltalk, it's clay in a developers hands. In contrast, Java and C# are more like balsa wood. Sure, you can build useful things from balsa wood - but it's a brittle material, and you can easily snap things off. Clay is more malleable. It's not a perfect analogy by any means, but it drives at the point I'm trying to make. I understand the benefits that static typing gives at a tool level. It's just that the cost is, in my opinion, far too high.