Intellisense

IntelliSense™ is a feature which was introduced and popularized by the Microsoft Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment. It involves a form of autocomplete for variable names, functions and member functions (for C++ classes). Using IntelliSense is a convenient way to access descriptions of functions, particularly their parameter lists. It allows significantly faster software development by easing the amount of keyboard input required. It also allows less reference to external documentation as documentation on many functions appears with the function name.

The feature works by accessing an automatically genereated database of classes and variable names. As the user begins typing a variable or function name (which the IDE determines by context), IntelliSense starts suggesting completions with a pop-up window containing a variable or function name. The user can either accept the suggestion by pressing or continue typing the name. Eventually IntelliSense will determine exactly which variable or function the user desires, given enough information. The feature also allows the user to select from a number of overloaded functions for object oriented programming. IntelliSense can also display a short description of a function in the pop-up window.

for example:

class A {
void sample();
void innovate();
}

class B extends A {
A obj = new A();
obj. //pop up menu comes up, which displays list of suggested methods,
hence user need not type it all

What promted me to write this post was that we use this feature every now and then but don't know that a term exists for it. 'Intellisense'.. interesting!