[rtpg]

An advantage of using something that isn't text is that our tooling can also be better. I think we've all had the experience of git diffs being complete messes due to some variables moving around but git matching the wrong parentheses

I agree that with a language like python (or most all languages) syntax doesn't become an issue, but if we can reduce complexity on one part of the editor, maybe we can introduce stronger _general_ refactoring tools (not just language-specific ones).

Anyways I think there's some good research happening in the domain of program editing (light table being one thing, albeit derived from some other tools), because the objective isn't to write hello world quickly, but to be able to quickly and confidently iterate on larger codebases (much like what vim lets you do quickly for simpler formats)