[avaer]

I got Minority Report vibes.

This kind of approach might be what (finally) unlocks visual programming?

I feel like most good programmers are like good chess players. They don't need to see the board (code). But for inputting the code transformation into the system this might be a good programmer's chessboard.

Though to make it work concretely for arbitrary codebases I feel like a coding agent behind the scenes is 100% required.

[netsharc]

A 3d environment (VR-headset with Tom Cruise-style-swiping, or Doom-style with WASD navigation) would be cool, one could be "in orbit", observing the system, watching the nodes and their interactions, and pause and see what messages they're passing to each other. How about time-travel-debugging to allow rewinds too!

As a bonus, porting Doom to it should be "trivial".

[mathgeek]

> I feel like most good programmers are like good chess players.

A specific type or area of developers, I'd say. There are many types and not all of them require understanding sizeable code bases to do their work well.

[soulofmischief]

Understanding your large codebase is a few prompts away. You can ask a model to trace through and provide reports on the project's design, architectural and implementation. From there, you can drill in with followups.

Done right, you may not know specific lines or chunks of code by heart, but much like a tuned-in company CEO, you have eyes and ears on the ground and retain global oversight and insight of the project itself. For specifics, you can learn what you need as you need it. If that means knowing how every single module works, that's just a conversation with your agent.