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This is a perfect Future of Coding demo — a super simple proof of concept, of something I’ve never seen before, that is so obvious in hindsight, that pulls disparate ideas together, that opens the door to much further exploration.

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Chris Rabl

@crabl

· Aug 27, 2020

idea: a "layered" text editor, inspired by @michael_nielsen's concept of a "photoshop for writers". i usually write outlines to help guide my thoughts, having them in the same document (but on a separate layer that can be shown and hidden) is ideal imgur.com/a/wU3o8ka

Ivan Reese

@spiralganglion

Aug 27, 2020

I genuinely think there’s something really special about this idea. A “layer” in text is just a style (color, font, whatever) with a visibility toggle. Nothing more is necessary. Make as many of them as you want. Name them, or not. I want this everywhere.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Aug 27, 2020

I think ornaments were originally conceived of using an overhead transparency to give the 'layers': twitter.com/pigworker/stat

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In a similar vein, I kind of want layered code annotations. So you can either see it together or separate from the original definition, but not have to choose a single, canonical view - that should be up to the reader. At the moment I need to choose because I'm stuck with text.

6:15 AM · Aug 27, 2020Twitter Web App

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and

This is also a great way to show optimizer feedback. Did something get inlined? Why not? The Open Dylan IDE (used to be DylanWorks in the 1990s) does this.

Ivan Reese

@spiralganglion

Aug 27, 2020

You've both probably seen this, but: destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-