On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 14:14:18 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
Text is still most efficient form of providing information. Please call me back when something better will be invented. Then we can speak about minimal editing environment for it.
Okay, here's what I invented in 5 minutes that would be better than plain text:
* Arguments to a function call would go, instead of inside parentheses, inside a box with a solid, black border and some nice and unique background color.
* Template arguments would go in a box with a hatched border line and a different background color.
* Blocks are, instead of surrounded by braces, indicated by this thing that looks like a tall, black, thin, right-opening square bracket that spans the whole block and sits directly to the left of the left-most characters of the statements inside the block.
* Instead of having '*' indicate both "multiply" and "dereference", invent and use a new symbol that means "dereference". The same goes for all symbols, like '&', '!', '~', '@', that don't have a universally defined meaning that corresponds to its meaning in language X.
In order to input those "things that are not symbols found on your keyboard", you'd either need to learn keyboard shortcuts by heart, or use a custom keyboard, which is what tv and movie editors have done for 20 years with their Avid keyboards. Most other creative jobs require custom tools for performing the craft, why not programming?
