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Comment by egraether | Hacker News Reader

> code comes first; visual representation follows

I think this really is the core insight behind visual tooling. I'm currently working on Coati, a source explorer for C/C++, which does exactly that. By building a visual representation on top of a textual syntax, you can leverage the advantages of both.

https://www.coati.io/

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In actuality, text is a visual representation. Code is text, what he means is the abstract.

Text mandates a layout that most have at least some experience, but because it's sequential it doesn't map as well to problems in more yet few dimensions. Good graphical layout in contrast is almost a niche skill, just like project layout, architecture (3D) or and software architecture and engineering in more than three dimensions.

My problem with such tools as that it always looks nice on toy examples but when faced with some real-life complexity the source seems always way more clear and faster to navigate.

Naturally, you can't get rid of reading source code, that's where all the information is. But the visual representation can speed up navigation and understanding a lot. Having worked with the visual navigation of Coati for while now, I can tell you that it changed the way I develop software. Seeing at a glance which classes derive from an interface or where and how often a function is called gives you a whole new perspective on your codebase.

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