Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhomde | Hacker News Reader

That's actually a good idea, thanks! I'm not sure it would be feasible but it would be neat if methods was automatically versioned (in all but syntaxtic changes) and you could automagically compare results of the different versions.

It kinda falls apart with refactoring but still :) I'm finding it more and more evident that file's as the default unit of storage and viewing of code is an obsolete concept

View on HN

> I'm finding it more and more evident that file's as the default unit of storage and viewing of code is an obsolete concept

Fascinating. Could you expand on this or link somewhere?

It's just a general thought I've been having. We're using text and files because it's the way things always have been. But it seems there should be benefits to perhaps move beyond that.

Things like with more canonical representations of code, rather than arguing over coding standards (although it can still text-based rather than completely graphical). Ability to more easily see related code and flows. Manage the meaning of code rather than its text (not changing text but changing symbols when you refactor).

There's been attempts to move in that this direction with things like code bubbles (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsPX0nElJ0k) but yet there hasn't been an approach that's both visually attractive and offers enough benefits, but it's probably coming somewhere down the line

Code bubbles is hands down the most awsome thing I've seen in months! Where can I get it? I'll switch to JAVA for this? Thanks for sharing.

Edit: to answer my question, yes this really exists http://cs.brown.edu/~spr/codebubbles/

Single-file coding is an entire subculture. See leo [1] and org-mode [2] programming.

[1] http://leoeditor.com/

[2] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html#literat...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com