alt Hacker NewsSuch a strange attitude.
If a tool is clumsy, we try to improve it, that has been the case since the first stone artifacts created a million years ago.
Do you think that the (sort of) tree-based affordances that most modern code editors do support, like autoindentation and brace pairing/enclosing, are silly too? What about some slightly more advanced features, like the AST-based "extend selection" and "move statement up/down" features in JetBrains IDEs?
Or do you think that the status quo just somehow happens to be exactly right and going any further would be silly?
It would be silly strictly for how strongly worded it is. I should also say that there is nothing wrong with being silly. Someone may actually come up with something some day that meaningfully changes us here.
That is, I am not disagreeing that it can be a little bit clunky. But, a lot of the power that experienced users have in reading code is specifically that they have built a bit of automaticity in reading it. That is, the clunky aspects of fixing it is something you pretty much have to do. You just build speed at automatically doing it rapidly.
So, the status quo is to use the helper functions that you want to use. But usually after you get the experience in the clunky phase.