We could have our cake and eat it too in this case. All an IDE should do is not allow freeform editing of text but rather only editing of text that relates to

We could have our cake and eat it too in this case. All an IDE should do is not allow freeform editing of text but rather only editing of text that relates to the AST - in other words, creating an AST by carefully selected text. This would solve the issue of readability while enhancing the programming experience.