> I have to wonder if anyone likes flat user interfaces or just user studies are broken.
I don’t have any experience in running user studies, but it sounds difficult separate the momentary frustration and drop in efficiency that a change in _familiarity_ brings from an actual difference in long-term _usability_. Do you know if the user survey the consultancy did tried to account for this?
I've been wanting to try something like this for a long time! Is there any way to sign up for updates?
(In particular, I'm waiting for the option to turn off the AI stuff, at least for when I am trying things out.)
I especially love the ability to zoom into a function and hide the rest of a file. I've wanted that sort of thing a surprising number of times. I'm thinking one could also use this to virtually rearrange a single file by pulling the functions in that file that you are working on next to each other easily?
In addition to the editing interface, I think there are probably a lot of visualization opportunities in editors:
- what's the interaction between my code and third-party dependencies?
- what are the dependencies/call graph of my code? or perhaps just a portion of it?
- call graphs can be nested — perhaps you care for a dependency graph at the class or module level, or perhaps you want to "drill down" into the call graph inside an object
In all these cases, being able to seamlessly transition between the visualization and editing — like you seem to be aiming towards — seems like the killer feature.
And, of course, there are lot of other interesting visualization opportunities once you have any sort of graphics in your editor:
One last thought: if you haven't read _The Programmer's Brain_, you should at least listen to this podcast. https://se-radio.net/2021/06/episode-462-felienne-on-the-pro... There are a bunch of editing ideas related to how our brain works that I haven't seen well supported in an editor yet. You took one step in that direction — maybe there are some more opportunities?