Declaration syntax

[Chris Cain]

On Wednesday, 8 January 2014 at 08:47:23 UTC, Boyd wrote:
> If you're out for easier code readability, then I'd recommend 
> not to bother with syntax too much. It'll only get you a slight 
> readability increase at most, and you'll piss off anyone who 
> doesn't agree with you, or doesn't want to refactor his code.
>
> I've been experimenting with language design a bit and I found 
> that a much bigger issue with coding, is that we still use 
> files and plain text. An IDE where code is represented in a 
> simple tree and saved in a database, for example, would improve 
> things dramatically, and no language changes would be necessary.

What you've described is almost exactly what I kind-of came up 
with on my own too. If I had time, I'd work on such a concept to 
see whether it actually works in practice, but I don't see any 
good reason why it wouldn't. The only issue is that it would 
require more of a time investment to get started (working on a 
compiler is hard enough... but requiring a custom IDE to go with 
it? Ouch).

I've got a few more ideas but they're crazy enough that I 
wouldn't feel comfortable talking about them prior to actually 
testing the ideas out to see if it works well.