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Totally agree! Plaintext is an unnormalized form of program code, and working in it generates all sorts of artificial problems. I've started various pet projects to try to be able to edit the AST naturally, but haven't seen much success yet. The UX is really difficult.

I think the Light Table team is trying to do this now with Eve, although it sounds like they are turning it into something even more revolutionary but further from textual visualization.



working in it generates all sorts of artificial problems.

Indeed. Escaping characters from comments or strings is one obvious example. Programmers serve the compiler instead of the other way around.

I've started various pet projects to try to be able to edit the AST naturally, but haven't seen much success yet. The UX is really difficult.

I've also been working in it some months ago, using SQLite and Lazarus. I hope I can recover the project now.

If you or someone else are interested, feel free to contact me by email, it's (for real) in the profile.




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