A better alternative is theoretically possible we just haven't devoted significant time and resources to it. It is possible to create an "editor" that edits th

A better alternative is theoretically possible we just haven't devoted significant time and resources to it. It is possible to create an "editor" that edits the objects of the application but not as text. It can look almost identical to a text editor but under the hood it knows more about each "node" that you are interacting with. One challenge is that sometimes these applications are not flexible enough to deal with "temporarily invalid" programs. So they become rigid and feel less flexible than a normal text editor. But those challenges can be overcome. This suddenly opens the door to so many wonderful possibilities. I know because I have worked on an experimental prototype for such a thing. For example text-based version control will be automatically obsolete. Your IDE will have the history of every single piece of your program (program is stored as a rich object in the database). Your IDE can suddenly present different "layers" of information to you in a clean way. For example you can "hide" an entire block of code and just label it with "Check if user has sufficient privileges". Then the IDE can allow you to expand and explore that section of the program if you wish. But otherwise you can collapse it and just scan over it with your eyes. The one-dimensional flat nature of a text-based system discourages us from attaching additional information to the pieces of the program. We need a way to be able to "navigate" through multiple dimensions of information in relation to the obejcts in the program. For keeping documentation in sync, the IDE allows you to view/create/modify the documentation for a given object of the program therefore it can guarantee certain things. Your environment is fully aware of the relationship between an object and its corresponding documentation. It's not just a piece of string that gets ignored. So when you change the body of a function it can pop up a warning and say "Hey you have modified this function since revision #48452 but the documentation has not been changed. Click here to update the documentation.". Your environment will be aware of, for example, the relationship between tests and obejcts (such as functions). So it can tell you in a 100% reliable way, not based on file name conventions and error-prone parsing, that hey across your project the following functions have no tests associated with them. There's enormous inertia against an initiative like this because of our dependence on existing technologies. But we cannot advance software engineering to the next stage unless we move beyond the "a program is a bunch of files that we view and edit like a book" mentality. We need environments that are much more aware and in-sync with the broader context of a program/project as a whole and in a reliably-structured manner. Check this out as a basic example: https://isomorf.io/#!/demos https://isomorf.io/#!/demos (I'm not affiliated with them)