Sonata

Crossposted from Mastodon, since this turned out longer than I expected.

Unix, and consequently every modern OS, is stringly typed, i.e., data is passed between programs as strings and nothing else. JSON is an attempt to improve the situation, but it's not enough. A real cure to this would be a deep-rooted overhaul of how we think about computer systems.

Rule of thumb: if you're doing it right, a programming language shouldn't have a "syntax". It should have IDEs that write typed ASTs. There's no reason for source code to be text¹ files.

If you want to create an SVG image, you use Inkscape, not $EDITOR². Even though SVG is ultimately XML. Inkscape doesn't even show you the XML, nor should it.

Apply that thinking to everything. On the back end, that means static typing. On the front end, that means a real usecase-native editor rather than a generic text (string) editor.

Maybe you can make a semigeneric "object editor" with plugins, like Emacs with major modes, but for editing typed data where Emacs only handles text (strings).

And no, JSON is not typed data. Not even slightly. At best it's a string representation of typed data. But it's still a string.

If you have to "serialize" data to pass data to another program, or "parse" it to receive it, something has gone horribly wrong.

1. Whenever you hear "text", you should always mentally substitute "string(s)". A text file is a single huge string.

2. Note how we always say $EDITOR, never $TEXTEDITOR, because obviously the only thing you would ever want to edit is strings, right?