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0 pointsdangoor3y ago0 comments

I don't know anything about how you're storing the source, but if the data elided from view could be stored in files next to the source that were more readable than JSON, you could potentially take advantage of the whole git ecosystem still. People could put code up for review and the reviewers could even confirm if the additional (normally out of sight) information made sense to them.

FWIW, I'm totally on board with the idea of focusing on the interactive experience, but history has shown it to be very difficult for language environments not based on files to cross the chasm into more common use. (If you don't care about lots of users, then ignore this entire comment! Plus, it's always _possible_ that something will cross over, but we've got decades of people trying...)

Anyhow, I'm really excited to see where you go with this!

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jaredly3y ago

Oh hi kevin! So if there's a possibility that the "extra data" would get out of sync with the "source code" (e.g. via a git merge, or someone just editing the source code as plain text), then it unfortunately breaks the guarantees that this system needs :( I guess I could store a sha of each and fail loudly if I detect that one was edited "outside of the IDE" but again I think that would break the assumptions that git makes about diffs &c. I've tried to go down the "text but nicer" route before, and it always comes up short; so now I'm trying "text is not a supported representation" we'll see how far I get.

dangoorOP3y ago

Hey Jared :)

Yeah, good point that text is a potentially fragile approach when combined with git. I think the Squeak Smalltalk folks figured out a way to retrofit git support, so maybe it's possible to go all-in on the representation you want and work out git support later if it seems useful enough.

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