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I often thought about a concept of an “IDE” where there are no files. You would instead have a “database” of functions/classes that you work with. Some modern I

by izoow 5y ago

I often thought about a concept of an “IDE” where there are no files. You would instead have a “database” of functions/classes that you work with. Some modern IDEs come close, but you still have to worry about files. I guess getting rid of files completely might require some extra magic from the IDE to make it work with current programming languages. Does something like this exist?

travisjungroth 5y ago
Take it a step further and instead of a database use content addressing. https://www.unisonweb.org/ https://www.unisonweb.org/
michael_chip 5y ago
This sounds very similar to how a Smalltalk development environment works. Instead of a file system you have a class browser that you use to navigate your code.
pitaj 5y ago
You could technically do this with Rust. rust-analyzer will allow you to jump to certain types, functions, etc, and Rust has first-class modules.
- 0xCMP 5y ago
  Things like rust-analyzer are exactly what I think lead me to believe... what if code was designed to be imported by a "database" and then changes could be made there and serialized back. Not too dissimilar to how unison lets you select functions to edit, but drop the cli and text files requirements. Create an API/UI/etc. to edit the "code" in the "database".
zzbzq 5y ago
In an abstract way it's not really different. Next you'll want namespaces and sub-namespaces, and we're back to files and directories, just built again on top of something that's not a file system.
0xCMP 5y ago
Yep I think this will be my next major project. Taking inspiration from Rust, Go/Zig, Nix, Unison, Old SmallTalk and Self videos, Eve, and probably SQLite/Postgres. There is a lot of separate innovation that could be combined; so I think. While inspired from these various things I doubt it would just be "another smalltalk" or "just a nocode thing" which many modern versions of this end up looking like.
sixstringtheory 5y ago
I have an idea for an IDE that stores functions independently, and instead of being contained in classes/modules defined by syntactical scope delineated by eg curly braces, they simply get tags that you can browse/search/filter in various ways. I image something like a UML class browser with little planes containing code snippets and connections between them for call graphs etc.
zepto 5y ago
IBM Visual Age for smalltalk and Java worked like this.

by izoow 5y ago

travisjungroth 5y ago

Take it a step further and instead of a database use content addressing. https://www.unisonweb.org/ https://www.unisonweb.org/

michael_chip 5y ago

This sounds very similar to how a Smalltalk development environment works. Instead of a file system you have a class browser that you use to navigate your code.

pitaj 5y ago

You could technically do this with Rust. rust-analyzer will allow you to jump to certain types, functions, etc, and Rust has first-class modules.

0xCMP 5y ago
Things like rust-analyzer are exactly what I think lead me to believe... what if code was designed to be imported by a "database" and then changes could be made there and serialized back. Not too dissimilar to how unison lets you select functions to edit, but drop the cli and text files requirements. Create an API/UI/etc. to edit the "code" in the "database".

zzbzq 5y ago

In an abstract way it's not really different. Next you'll want namespaces and sub-namespaces, and we're back to files and directories, just built again on top of something that's not a file system.

0xCMP 5y ago

Yep I think this will be my next major project. Taking inspiration from Rust, Go/Zig, Nix, Unison, Old SmallTalk and Self videos, Eve, and probably SQLite/Postgres. There is a lot of separate innovation that could be combined; so I think. While inspired from these various things I doubt it would just be "another smalltalk" or "just a nocode thing" which many modern versions of this end up looking like.

sixstringtheory 5y ago

I have an idea for an IDE that stores functions independently, and instead of being contained in classes/modules defined by syntactical scope delineated by eg curly braces, they simply get tags that you can browse/search/filter in various ways. I image something like a UML class browser with little planes containing code snippets and connections between them for call graphs etc.

zepto 5y ago

IBM Visual Age for smalltalk and Java worked like this.