You're right to remind that the filesystem is a metaphor, a model and not the reality of what's going on on the computer. The thing is it's still the common den

You're right to remind that the filesystem is a metaphor, a model and not the reality of what's going on on the computer. The thing is it's still the common denominator between different IDEs and text editors. IDEs cannot be used in every situation so any professional developer who uses an IDE also knows his way around with a text editor. If we were to come up with a better abstraction than the file system, it would have to be shared between different IDEs for interoperability. My understanding is that Smalltalk was such an attempt but somehow that aspect of it didn't really spread. Are you aware of current progress being made in this area?