[michelledepeil]

I think you misinterpreted that. Their gripe wasn't with a textual representation of code, but the fact that we interact with it as text, not in any form. And that fundamentally limits the power of the tools we use to interact with it, according to the OP.

Of course everything can have a textual representation eventually.

Your final question, "what will you have instead?", really nails the point of the article, as that's basically what the author is asking (to be invented).

[westoncb]

I propose one solution here ("How to Make View-independent Program Models"): http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-make-view-indepe...

—but many people have tackled or are tackling this problem ("structure" or "projectional" editor will lead you there if you're curious).