3 ms·

because in most languages there's a level of abstraction between the syntax of the language and the actual data structure of the program. To use the much malign

• vidarh 3y ago
  You can do this with most other language too, but I think the challenge is that a lot of us have habits that we'd need to change. E.g. with structural editing I couldn't easily decide I want to add exception handling around a block in Ruby by writing "begin", then moving down, and writing "rescue ..." and "end" - I'd likely need to mark the block first. That may well end up being faster, but it's a fairly big change. I wonder, though, if a "semi-structural" editor with a keypress to "complete what is otherwise an error" would work well. E.g. I write "begin" and so imbalances an expression, and the editor looked at what I typed that changed the parse from successful to an error and puts up options to insert "rescue ... end" or just "end". Maybe coupled with a warning on save if the file does not parse.