Excuse the delay... in case you're still reading: No one's discovered a better method of representation. Hmmmm... that's only half true. The text layout in a

Excuse the delay... in case you're still reading: No one's discovered a better method of representation. Hmmmm... that's only half true. The text layout in a real program is already a tree-like representation: using vertical and horizontal space (blank lines, indentation) and providing syntax highlightling, we "paint" text to resemble the real structure: the one the compiler understand. But syntax highlighters, "intellisense" and the rest of IDE tricks are just that: a patch over the text handling. A true IDE would read code directly into a in-memory tree structure, resolving external references, making a first processing of the code on the moment the code is loaded. A true IDE would eliminate the burden of writing annoying control characters (curly braces, semicolons, quotes) to placate the compiler, escaping delimiters, correcting indentation, etc. The editor could use some quick key combinations to navigate the code. This is not really related with a Visio-like interface. It would look more like add-ons such as Resharper that "understand" the code to a point and make it easier to write code. Visually it would present the code already indented and colorized. It could be "skinned". Unlike add-ons, it would be fully aware of the code meaning, so it wouldn't need scanning the code to support editing. The code would be fully loaded and cross-references checked. BTW, there have been some proof-of-concept of "syntax-driven editors" or something like that. I haven't even seen them, so not sure to what point it's what I have in mind.