Smart text is live!
Naming things is hard, and when it comes to the way that code can sprawl, changing things later through refactoring can be a headache. We have to update these symbols and names throughout the code (or it won’t compile and run), and then, we have to update all of the documentation. With SmartText – there’s no longer any reason to put off doing the latter, because Swimm can help!
Here’s a really simple example where we de-pluralize a constant:
Not all refactoring can be immediately auto-synced, but with Smart Text, developers will know right away when something is out of date, and know what they should be looking for. Bringing the doc back up to date is just a matter of reselecting, or accepting auto synced changes.
This will save you many hours of time, and take even more of the rote/grunt work out of maintaining great and effective documentation. But, we don’t just stop at symbol names, any “smart” paths including directories and file links will now stay in sync as refactoring moves things around. Let’s move some directories shall we? It’s not really refactoring until you move a bunch of directories:
As you can see, AutoSync was able to resolve all parts of this change, which included changing a directory name. In this example, no matter what we throw at it, developers will have correct expectations of what they’ll find in the code vs what’s in the documentation, even if reselection hasn’t taken place yet. That is a major improvement in most cases.
We’ve also got some bug fixes and other quality of life enhancements, including better flows of removing outdated docs and snippets, so please upgrade as soon as you can! If you’d like to put the pain of documentation refactoring following code refactors in the past, join a product demo (no sales calls!) today, or come say hello in our Slack community if you have more questions or thoughts.
A quick reminder: You can always see the latest features, fixes and changes in the help menu on the left hand bottom corner – look for the release notes:
We’ll always highlight the major changes, but make sure to check out the notes when you see them come up in the app as well.
We hope you enjoy this update and can’t wait to hear about what you’re doing with it! While Smart Text is still in the early stages of development, the value it brings through the time and grind it saves developer teams is already making waves. 🌊
