What you are describing is closely related to some of the ideas of Intentional Programming. The core idea is that the code is just a model (AST, graph...) and

What you are describing is closely related to some of the ideas of Intentional Programming. The core idea is that the code is just a model (AST, graph...) and your editor projects it to whatever format or syntax you like. Development then is coding in these representations of the model or building new smart abstractions and model transformations (DSLs) for going from your screen representation to lower-level building blocks and eventually compiling to e.g. something that runs on the JVM. It quickly becomes just as complicated as it sounds. The best implementation in my experience is that of JetBrains’ free tool MPS (Meta Programming System). They start with the model (your AST) rather than the code. The learning curve is steep and it is difficult to adopt it in teams where people are more focused on shipping features than building exotic tooling to help them do it.