Isn't this the "sunk cost fallacy"? i.e. we've spent X effort-years creating text-based tools, might as well keep going with them, even if there's a potentially better way of programming?

Imagine semantic version control that can parse your AST and tell you which methods, expression, classes, functions etc were modified, instead of just syntax changes like "this line of text is different because you added a semicolon."

I'd love to see more semantic-focused tools, eventually leading to generic solutions that work across any AST. Polyglot IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA can come close, but only because they implement their own parsers, to derive an... AST!