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again... I hear you. been there, done that, have the T-shirt, over 35 years of coding in multiple domains, including GUIs, graphics, games, code-driven visual layouts, etc. and I'm saying with a low-overhead deterministic-optimized editor like vim, and the right person at the keyboard, this can be done very quickly and accurately. and again, to continue your example, the hard part is not getting the syntax correct it's ensuring the resulting visual image -- your example suggests a vectory visual artifact ala OpenGL or SVG, etc. -- has the right shape and position. Syntax is something my brain/eye system just tells me, instantly, RIGHT or WRONG. our brains are great at this. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying for non-newb, non-lame programmers it's a use case that optimizes for a cost that's one of the smallest costs imposed on the programmer. not unlike "premature optimization". I'm not saying syntax-enforcing keystrokes are a bad thing. I do think there are benefits to having a set of syntax-generic consistent keystrokes, like vim, across all the various syntaxes one has to deal with, day in and day out. If the only thing I ever had to edit was C files or JSON, that's it, nothing else, then yes having a C or JSON-semantic keystroke-restricted inescapable mode (with prompts, wizards, etc.) would be a help. (Which arguably is how all the big fat modern IDEs have evolved towards anyway.) But I'm very aware of the phenomenon where one can gain in the small but lose in the large. Local maxima, etc. Also benefits to having screen match print, etc. Being grep-friendly, diff-friendly, textual VCS-optimized friendly, etc. Local maxima. The sneakiest wrongs are right in the small. |
> non-lame programmers
How many programmers are out there that are "lame"? Honestly, I still to this day work with code written by developers with years of experience who still get syntax wrong. Often I forget that most skills follow a bell-curve, and most developers are not one-with-their-machine-and-language -- hell, even I'm probably not, although some days I might feel like it. I think having a system that removes that barrier would allow that vast sea of average programmers to move closer to that sublime moment where your thoughts are transcribed in code, perfectly, in one go.