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I like this idea, not least because I've also had it myself. I use Xcode's "Callers" and "Callees" assistant editor all the time but that's a primitive tool com

I like this idea, not least because I've also had it myself. I use Xcode's "Callers" and "Callees" assistant editor all the time but that's a primitive tool compared to your suggestion. > Edit in multiple views If you take a closed system, one that begins executing from a fixed point and doesn't have to handle events, concurrency, asynchronous calls, interaction with any external process, then you probably could create a tool like this that would work nicely most of the time. It's going to be a bit harder to do that once you introduce those common real-world situations. I think you're really asking for a tool which externalizes a lot of the internal reasoning we do as programmers. You want a tool to make concrete some of the abstract models we build up in our heads about the structure of our programs: call graphs, event sequences etc. I wonder if it would be useful for education? If not that, then such a tool would be incredibly helpful for getting to grips with a new, large codebase. I'm just not sure it's particularly do-able in any kind of non-trivial way.

psyc 9y ago
Yes, this is definitely what I'm getting at. I do think it would be amazing for education, but also for real work. The Unity Editor, and other similar WYSIWYG game editors, are kind of half-way between tools like Maya and programming environments. Other than being buggy and disorganized, the idea of it is amazing. They let you view "the program" from the 3rd person, as a visual object, inspect and edit state, etc. The productivity gains are real, IMO. I think the approach generalizes, in principle, to all systems, including the real-world concerns in your second paragraph. Certainly it would be non-trivial. Still, if I ever have the free time, it's about the only thing I'd want to work on.
- scrumper 9y ago
  One place to start could be the debugger. This at least has the advantage of a fixed call stack at any point of inspection rather than a whole cloud of possibilities, making drawing some of those call graphs and flows much easier. I agree, I think it'd be really useful for real work, particularly maintenance work and ramping up on established code bases.

psyc 9y ago

Yes, this is definitely what I'm getting at. I do think it would be amazing for education, but also for real work. The Unity Editor, and other similar WYSIWYG game editors, are kind of half-way between tools like Maya and programming environments. Other than being buggy and disorganized, the idea of it is amazing. They let you view "the program" from the 3rd person, as a visual object, inspect and edit state, etc. The productivity gains are real, IMO. I think the approach generalizes, in principle, to all systems, including the real-world concerns in your second paragraph. Certainly it would be non-trivial. Still, if I ever have the free time, it's about the only thing I'd want to work on.

scrumper 9y ago
One place to start could be the debugger. This at least has the advantage of a fixed call stack at any point of inspection rather than a whole cloud of possibilities, making drawing some of those call graphs and flows much easier. I agree, I think it'd be really useful for real work, particularly maintenance work and ramping up on established code bases.