1. An article of manufacture for use in a computer system for providing a code assist function which suggests candidates responsive to a parsing of a partial program instruction statement, said article of manufacture comprising a computer-useable storage medium having a computer program embodied in said medium which causes the computer system to execute method steps comprising: determining a current cursor position in the partial program instruction statement; parsing the partial program instruction statement before the current cursor position; generating a list of candidates to be inserted at the current cursor position responsive to the parsing of the partial program instruction statement; applying a user-selected preference to the list of candidates to generate a suggested list of candidates; displaying the list of suggested candidates; allowing a user to select one of the list of suggested candidates; and inserting at the current cursor position the user-selected suggested candidate.