Microsoft please get your tab to autocomplete shit together

(ivanca.github.io)

131 points | by AmbroseBierce 5 hours ago ago

81 comments

  • meander_water 4 hours ago

    This is actually bearable compared to the new terminal suggestions in vscode. Not only does it autosuggest bizzare completions for commands, it breaks shell completions. So when I tab a file path, it shoves the absolute path into the partially typed path making it unusable.

    • causal 4 hours ago

      Yeah for anyone else (especially Mac and Linux users) who recently had this frustration thrust upon you: Go into VSCode settings and search for terminal integration > uncheck.

    • kace91 3 hours ago

      It’s so weird, vscode worked flawlessly for me for years and after migrating to neovim a month or two ago I keep seeing complains.

      Has there been a change lately and in the project, or is it just internet bias?

      • hoten 3 hours ago

        Recent changes have been a little invasive. The terminal auto complete was a week or so ago, and the popular Gitlens extension also recently pushed a really poor rebase interface. Besides those two in the last weeks, I can't remember any time VS Code has messed up my workflows so badly.

      • reactordev 2 hours ago

        Copilot

    • tsujamin 4 hours ago

      I thought I was going crazy, but it started feeling materially worse sometime in last few weeks.

      • matltc 2 hours ago

        Nope, not crazy. Pretty much solely used it for years but got a lazyvim* setup last week

        Still has excellent integrated debugging and is more familiar than nvim, but it has really started to get in its own way the past couple minor versions

        *Not "lazy I'm" (though perhaps I am for letting that slide)

    • smj-edison 3 hours ago

      Ohh, that's what has been happening when I've had tab completion fail recently! Thanks for mentioning it...

  • yoyohello13 4 hours ago

    I don’t know what it is but I think commpletion across editors has gotten so much worse. Even PyCharm now routinely completes some hallucinated method or library. Even with AI completions off I feel like it still somehow got dumber since 2023.

    • Yossarrian22 3 hours ago

      Nobody is dogfooding the non-AI versions of autocomplete anymore is my best guess

  • diath 4 hours ago

    It's because Tab accepts copilot suggestion, you have to press Enter instead to accept the language server suggestion.

    • Someone1234 4 hours ago

      Yes, and what a mess it has been.

      Intellisense + Intellicode + Roslynator (extension) combined were really the height of productivity in Visual Studio. Now they've driven a steam-roller over all of that, forced CoPilot down our throats.

      I LIKE CoPilot's "chat" interface, and agents are fine too (although Claude in VS Code is tons better), but CoPilot auto-complete is negative value and shouldn't be used.

      • stevage 3 hours ago

        Huh I'm the opposite. I find the copilot chat slow and low value compared to ChatGPT. But I use the tab autocomplete a lot.

        Otoh I disabled all the intellisense stuff so I don't have the issues described in TFA: tab is always copilot autocomplete for whatever it shows in grey.

      • mcv 4 hours ago

        I hate the time unpredictability of it. Intellij also has AI completion suggestions, and sometimes they're really useful. But sometimes when I expect them, they don't come. Or they briefly flash and then disappear.

        What would be nice is if you could ask for a suggestion with one key, so it's there when I want it, and not when I don't. That would put me in control. Instead I feel subjected to these completely random whims of the AI.

      • n8cpdx 2 hours ago

        Do people know you can turn copilot off?

    • dietr1ch 24 minutes ago

      Alright, he's just holding it wrong.

      Why can't all the suggestions come through the same UI element? That's beyond my understanding.

      You'd get suggestions from, - multiple language servers - matches from the same buffer/project or sibling pane (tab,window, whatever you call it) - matches from the dictionary

  • locusofself 3 hours ago

    Don't get me started on powershell!

    For one, it's the right arrow key for complete for most things (but tab for others).

    But by FAR the worst thing is that often times you'll type a command and try to tab/arrow complete an argument, and the module/dll or whatever is not loaded into memory, and so theres some blocking operation and loads the module which takes 10+ seconds. This happens to me almost every day.

    I do love powershell otherwise though, after 20+ years in bash, there is actually some things to like about it.

    • jknutson 3 hours ago

      If you like Powershell but have some complaints, you might find nushell to be the best of both worlds. My elevator pitch for it would be imagine the object-oriented / typed nature of Powershell, minus the verbosity and windows-centric design of it. As someone who develops on and for windows computers, nushell is a real breath of fresh air.

      • naikrovek 2 hours ago

        I have a command line program at work which outputs json. Pure JSON in all situations.

        I thought nushell would be able to make sense of that and display it semi-nicely.

        Nushell pukes on it, errors out, and doesn’t even show the output of the command. As far as sins go for a shell, not showing the output of the program it just ran is very high among them.

        nushell had its chance with me.

        • jknutson an hour ago

          With external commands you might have to collect the output of the program before doing any sort of manipulation. I’ve been got by this before too; the fix is simple (for me at least). `external.exe | collect | from json` et voila

    • cowlby 2 hours ago

      Powershell right arrow is madness… just found out F2 shows all the options though and finally it’s a little more tolerable

    • RajT88 3 hours ago

      I have a deep and abiding love of Powershell but you are spot on.

      It is amazing until you run into one of these insane behaviors that somehow nobody ever fixed.

      (Some are actually fixed finally in 7.x - like issues with filenames with grave characters in them)

      • naikrovek an hour ago

        I like PowerShell too, but in what universe other than ours (clearly the worst one) is it even possible for loading a module to take more time than the blink of an eye?

        Microsoft should find it embarrassing how long it takes powershell to load a module. Pushing <tab> to autocomplete a cmdlet name should never take more than maybe 100 milliseconds.

    • nunez an hour ago

      Been the case since forever. Very annoying

  • novaleaf 12 minutes ago

    FYI: VSCode is actually a much better autocomplete experience than Visual Studio 2026. Go figure.

  • mparkms 19 minutes ago

    This is why I remapped the shortcut for AI autocomplete to Option-Tab.

  • OptionOfT 4 hours ago

    Reminds me of Windows Search.

    It's been botched since they added ads to the Start Menu.

    Pretty soon VSCode will show you intellisense ads in the list of code completions.

    • Someone1234 4 hours ago

      Windows Search requires a DNS lookup, and HTTP request to start your search, as a direct result if either one of those is slow the whole UI lags and hangs. It hasn't ever been fixed in Windows 11.

      Also, there is a RegX way of disabling "bing" for-real in the search but they released an update that caused doing so to break search entirely if that was set (totally a coincidence I'm sure).

      • OptionOfT 4 hours ago

        I have resorted to installing my laptop with Ireland / English & later switching the region to US / English. That way it's considered part of the European Economic Area.

        Which allows me to disable web search in start, disable widgets, etc.

      • WackyFighter 2 hours ago

        I use this script here and it will remove the stupid bing search feature.

        https://github.com/musman96/win11debloat

      • naikrovek an hour ago

        > Windows Search requires a DNS lookup

        WHY? Why? Why. I’m seriously asking. Who thought that was a good idea? Who?! FIRE THEM.

        NO USER ever in the history of Windows users ever said: ā€œI want to search the contents of my computer, but windows search is too fast; can you please make windows search extremely slow, make it omit things that I know exist, and also make it search the internet? Also, I want you to index my laptop while it is sleeping in my bag, making my bag very hot, and using up all my battery trying to cool down so that I have no battery left when I open up the laptop.ā€

        No one has ever asked for that, but we have it, we’ve had it for a long damn time.

        • vkou 13 minutes ago

          The best thing about windows 11 is that if you hit the windows key, and type 'restart', it searches for 'restart' on Bing.

          Please give me the name, rank, and serial number of the PM who thought this was a good idea. I will use all my meager fortune to make sure that nobody will want to hire them for PM work ever again.

        • cryptonector 35 minutes ago

          BECAUSE ads that's why. They could have had the sense and respect for their users to make it async.

    • dietr1ch 23 minutes ago

      > It's been botched since they added ads to the Start Menu.

      Sounds like botched since they botched it

    • anonymars 3 hours ago

      It boggles my mind how broken this has become.

      Windows Vista/7, search was instant and correct (modulo hard drive speed and RAM). Then Windows 10 came along, I click a local result, half the time it takes forever to open Explorer, or nothing happens, or there's no results once it does open.

      By the way, things still work correctly and instantly with OpenShell, so something still works underneath whatever shit veneer has coated the shell

      Let me fix the title: Microsoft, please get your shit together

      I tried to help a relative set up a new Windows PC recently and had to give up. Everything was confusing and/or broken, and for the first time I am ready to just send them to Apple while they can still return it. A literal brand new PC with nothing installed, and after logging in, clicking Explorer in the task bar doesn't work and I have to reboot and try again? I'm not even angry, just disappointed.

      Did you know there's no more Office, they literally call it Microsoft Copilot 365 now? Like, I've been through shades of this before (".NET", anyone?) but it's a thoroughly unhinged clusterfuck on an entirely different level now.

      Oh, I'd say AI is rotting our brains, all right...

    • FridayoLeary 4 hours ago

      I'm convinced that the win10 Start Menu was the single worst thing microsoft inflicted upon us in that OS. I imagine that particular discussion went like this:

      Exec1:"We have a semi decent os with a refreshingly updated UI that should stay relevant for a decade. How can we make it better?"

      Exec2: "why not replace the perfectly good start menu we have with an ugly, oddly proportioned rectangle with animated ads for our products."

      Exec3: "Sounds great! Just make sure it has a quarter of the information density of the old one and takes up twice the screen space."

      I haven't used Win11 enough to discover how they have managed to further degrade the experience, but at least it looks nicer.

      • naikrovek an hour ago

        When Windows Phone was a thing, those live tiles were amazing. Those giant squares in the Win10 start menu were live tiles.

        Such a shame that so few applications on Win10 made use of them.

      • esseph 3 hours ago

        Do you remember the windows 8 full screen start menu?

        • 8note 2 hours ago

          i miss the wondows 8 inking tools. loved that for drawing system diagrams and flow charts:'(

  • itissid 4 hours ago

    There was a time when if you edited documentation in vscode and had copilot on it would complete internal user and project names when it encountered a path on some.random LLM project we were building. I could find people and their projects by just googling the username and contextual keywords.

    We all had a lot of laughs with tab auto complete and wondered in anticipation what ridiculous stuff it threw up next.

  • SoftTalker 24 minutes ago

    This is why I disable autocomplete everywhere. The only exception being shell completion on filenames and executables.

  • Waterluvian 32 minutes ago

    iOS autocomplete for the longest time was just absolutely insane. It would inject the selected suggested option into the middle of a word when I was correcting a spelling error. Really made me feel like I was doing something weird but I swear I was being normal for once.

    • godelski 14 minutes ago

      Mine still does this, especially when it's correcting a word. It happens when your cursor is in the word.

      But I'm not sure what I hate more: the one I hate the most is when it completes for you and then you get two instances of the word, no space separation or where it corrects the word you just swiped AND the word before it... and then when you press backspace it deletes both words...

      Btw, I have autocorrect disabled...

      iOS typing is a fucking nightmare

  • jimbo808 4 hours ago

    I wonder if 30% of their code being written by AI has anything to do with it

    • stefan_ 4 hours ago

      30% of code written by AI, but 100% of tools must be enshittified with the terrible and behind Microsoft Copilot even if it means you will blow up the goodwill for VS Code in a matter of months

  • shinymark 2 hours ago

    Change to real Visual Studio for C#. Visual Studio Code is complete garbage in comparison.

    • novaleaf 8 minutes ago

      dunno if you tried VS2026 C#, but it's worse. I have no extensions (besides the default Copilot) and it's a never ending battle of just trying to get the normal intellisense to show up. What's worst is that the copilot autocomplete suggestions fill in made up methods/properties. Why can't it look at intellisense to get the real ones?

    • grugagag 42 minutes ago

      Visual Studio started to enshitify as well

  • freetonik 5 hours ago

    Looks like Unity code. Not sure if it’s Visual Studio or VS Code, but yeah, it was baffling to me how weirdly bad C# support in either IDE is. Maybe something wrong with my setup, but autocompletions indeed suck (in addition to just wrong picks, editors often would suggest a symbol that doesn’t make sense from the typing perspective, as if there aren’t any language servers or intellisense or whatever).

    VS code would also eat up the curly brace at the end of a class declaration when auto-generating a method skeleton.

    I gave up and installed Rider. So far so good.

    • PacificSpecific 4 hours ago

      They say it's vscode in the article. I can't say I've seen anything that egregious happen with unity in visual studio.

      It's stuff like this though that keeps me from using vscode for code editing (I use it for markdown and JSON file editing only). I guess I don't know what I'm missing but it's never been a smooth experience for me. If I'm on Windows I tend to stick with visual studio.

      Maybe I should consider rider...

  • mfro 4 hours ago

    Pretty sure you’re supposed to press return in order to accept a dropdown suggestion. Tab is for accepting the AI code completion. I disabled completions.

    • Someone1234 4 hours ago

      Pretty sure they hijacked a key most developers had a muscle memory of using since Visual Basic 6 to pump their AI usage metrics, and then invented a workaround that requires re-learning their tool.

      • mfro 3 hours ago

        Fair point.

  • reactordev 2 hours ago

    C# DevKit has been doing this for the last month or so I’ve noticed.

    Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it’s algebra. I know VSCode replaced their autocomplete with copilot but whaaaat?

  • koakuma-chan 4 hours ago

    Ditch VSCode, switch to Zed.

    • citbl 3 hours ago

      There are still plenty of things that VSCode does and Zed doesn't. E.g. Dart debugging.

      Also there is the VC money problem with Zed, at some point, that money will want returns on every dollar spent.

      • koakuma-chan 2 hours ago

        1. Use println

        2. That's fine, they'll just build some cloud feature

        • vkou 5 minutes ago

          > 1. Use println

          Printf debugging is a usability and productivity disaster compared to an actual debugger.

    • shadester88 3 hours ago

      I didnt think I would ever switch from vscode but Zed is very nice and my daily driver now.

  • thecrumb 3 hours ago

    I switched from Sublime to VSCode years ago and have been fairly happy but the recent AI onslaught in VSCode is making me look at other editors.

  • n8cpdx 4 hours ago

    Not a very clear issue report, but looks like a conflict between language features, copilot, and possibly snippets?

    The project is open source and invites feedback in the form of issues, although sadly their issue report page is a bit of a cesspool - will really make you lose faith in humanity.

    https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues

    I think maybe vibe coders got to it and don’t realize that there are certain requirements to create useful feedback? Or maybe VS Code linking from the help menu is a bad idea.

    This blog post is a step above the ā€œdoesn’t work is garbageā€ issues filed in GitHub, but only just one. What did the author try to fix? When did it stop working? What kind of projects? What extensions are installed?

    Aside: in the spirit of Christmas cheer, I’ll share this fun meme, completely (un)related to the topic at hand: https://old.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to...

    • lloydatkinson 4 hours ago

      > Not a very clear issue report, but looks like a conflict between language features, copilot, and possibly snippets?

      Which is overwhelmingly the VS Code experience for any language. Everything feels shaky. I've had to report a bunch of irritating issues like the post for TypeScript - never fixed or resolved. I have never needed to report issues like this for C# in Visual Studio, and when I have tried C# in VS Code the experience makes me wonder if it's a bad joke.

  • Razengan an hour ago

    Someone needs to bring back the old "Windows [Aero] Task Force" website from back in the Vista/XP days that listed every minor UI/UX annoyance in Windows.

    And Jobs knows we need something like that for macOS and iOS too now.

  • PieUser 3 hours ago

    Is there a GitHub issue for this?

  • piskov 4 hours ago

    Jetbrains Rider is very nice. Especially with ideavim plugin.

    And pretty fast these fast these days.

  • giancarlostoro 5 hours ago

    Microsoft VS peaked for me in 2013 to 2017 when they decoupled a bunch of things, specifically .NET

    • CharlieDigital 4 hours ago

      .NET feels better than ever right now. C# native type unions maybe next year will be a big highlight.

  • markus_zhang an hour ago

    Another thing I'd like the team to fix, is to ignore autocomplete for ., -> and other operators in comments, or ignore all autocomplete in comments. VSCode does have the option, but at least for my C code, it only works for // comments, not /* */ ones.

  • tiotempestade 3 hours ago

    Why do people still spend time worrying about M$ stuff…

    • godelski 10 minutes ago

      Worrying? Because it's forced upon some of us.

      Bigger question is how they still exist while trying as hard as they can to kill themselves. Or why they're even trying to do that in the first place

    • yoyohello13 an hour ago

      Microsoft stuff is universally dogshit. The amount of time/money we burn on making Azure work as it’s supposed to is insane. I will never willingly give Microsoft money.

    • esseph 3 hours ago

      Because it runs probably as high as 95% of enterprise environments (desktop / laptop / office / exchange / active directory)

  • luxuryballs 3 hours ago

    Visual Studio has been doing wacky stuff to me like this when I am trying to start a LINQ statement and type a letter to be the lambda variable like Select(f => … but when I hit ā€˜f’ it just autocompletes some random model from some .NET api that starts with F that I then have to delete because why would I want FileStreamCombulator right now I’m trying to start a lambda??? and don’t remember it doing this in the past.

  • ziml77 2 hours ago

    I really hate that by default all of these tools perform completion with tab. It makes it very difficult to add indentation. It's not a problem with traditional autocomplete because you either need to already have a character typed before the cursor, or to have manually summoned the completions. But these AI autocompletes will try to generate code on completely empty lines, so you think you're pressing tab to get an indent and instead end up with code you did not want.

  • Someone1234 4 hours ago

    This is a company that cannot get "basic file search" working on their OS for 30+ years, I'm hardly holding my breath as they double-down on overcomplexity with even more overcomplexity.

    Shout-out to FileLocator Pro as an aside.

    • ashvardanian 3 hours ago

      Not a fan of Windows either, but playing devil’s advocate here: Apple’s Finder has steadily gotten worse over the last ~16 years, at least in my experience. It increasingly struggles with basic functionality.

      There seems to be a pattern where higher market cap correlates with worse ~~tech~~ fundamentals.

      • Aeglaecia 3 hours ago

        why would a company be incentivized to improve the user experience in ways that aren't profitable ? especially after watching the number one tech company literally worsen UX to increase profitability

    • croes 3 hours ago

      Or the start menu search

    • pcunite 4 hours ago

      yep, and FileSearchEX

  • jspann 3 hours ago

    > Ivan was born at a very young age, this has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.

    Lol