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In general, I agree that a syntax-tree would make more sense, but I think the text centrism is some sort of greatest common denominator as that approach works f
by JepZ 8y ago
In general, I agree that a syntax-tree would make more sense, but I think the text centrism is some sort of greatest common denominator as that approach works for many languages (more or less). A syntax tree on the other hand, would work better but probably required some sort of training for every new language :-/
- crispinb 8y agoSure, but I wasn't making a unicorn pitch. My point is that IntelliJ's relatively deep code insight nudges things in that direction right now, to an extent that makes coding in traditional editors (emacs being my favourite of these) feel a little primitive. In emacs, to change a function signature, I operate on lines of text, often across multiple files. In IntelliJ, I work on the level of the function signature, and only incidentally interact with it as 'text'. This is partial and patchy at best, but IMO a move in the right direction (towards affording higher levels of cognitive chunking when coding). Some languages have elements of this kind of thing working with traditional editors (eg Go Doctor for golang), and I'd ultimately prefer this less monolithic approach, but it's not really there yet.