Why is IntelliJ auto-complete so bad?

Question

Coming from a Netbeans scene, currently I'm trying to change my current work IDE to IntelliJ-idea, and the change so far has been pretty good but there is an absolutely important factor that still hasn't convinced me about IntelliJ, the auto-complete & intellisense.

Assume that I'm trying to create a new instance of a Scanner object, if I type new Scanner on Netbeans pressing CTRL + SPACE it pops up the following dialog with all the constructor parameteres it can receive:

Arguments in Netbeans

But, on other hand in Intellij, not only I need to add two parentheses in object declaration, when I press CTRL + SPACE it doesn't pop me the constructor arguments

Arguments in Intellij.

Click on images to see both Netbeans and Intellij results since I can't incorporate images due to being a new user.

EDIT!!!!!!! See this answer for a possible solution for my problem

please try to increase the xmx and xms values for your editor — Ahmad Al-Kurdi, Dec 28 '17 at 00:26
xmx & xms? sorry didnt understand could you explain a bit more about it? — freitzzz, Dec 28 '17 at 00:29
please read this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14763079/what-are-the-xms-and-xmx-parameters-when-starting-jvms — Ahmad Al-Kurdi, Dec 28 '17 at 00:30
You could try this plugin: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8638-auto-filling-java-call-arguments — y.bedrov, Dec 28 '17 at 10:02
@y.bedrov tried the plugin but it crashes on auto completing for me :( — freitzzz, Dec 29 '17 at 02:14

Sweeper · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-28T00:40:27.663

1

IntelliJ tries to find members that matches what you already typed fuzzily, so yeah, it does mean that you have to type more to get the correct completions. On the other hand, it gives you classes that you have not even imported yet, and imports it automatically for you if you select it.

About the constructor, it does show you all the overloads if you press (:

Alternatively, you can use this menu item (or its corresponding shortcut):

Don't forget that you can configure code completion in lots of ways in the settings:

Note the "Parameter Info" section. Make sure you have set the "Autopopup in:" setting properly.

edited Dec 28 '17 at 00:40

answered Dec 28 '17 at 00:33

Sweeper

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Or just `ctrl+p` (default setting for "Main menu > View > Parameter info") when you already wrote the parenthese. – Tom Dec 28 '17 at 00:36
exactly this is the dialog pop up im looking for, I tried to press ``(`` but it didnt pop up the dialog :( – freitzzz Dec 28 '17 at 00:38
@freitzzz See the edit. – Sweeper Dec 28 '17 at 00:40
@Sweeper thanks for the answers, the problem was that I had a 1 sec cooldown before the popup dialog was showing up! thanks again guys for the tip :) – freitzzz Dec 28 '17 at 00:46
@Sweeper sorry im a newbie on stackoverflow, it should be accepted by now I think – freitzzz Dec 29 '17 at 01:40

Why is IntelliJ auto-complete so bad?

1 Answers1