LW wrote:
What if your editor could reveal the referent of "it" with a simple mouse-over? Would that be an adequate solution?
Come to think of it, programming could be easier in general if more information could appear in this "tool-tip" fashion rather than requiring the heavyweight mechanism of applying a tool that opens another window, or worse, looking up documentation in a separate web-browser.
IIRC, the Dr. Scheme editor had such features back in 1999. They can be very useful on occasion; but the need to interact with them can be a hindrance. Also annoying is when the act of refactoring code breaks the tools used to simplify the process.
At ILC09, Duane Rettig outlined a smart debugger that could step all the way from source through macros down to compiled code. A similar framework may be needed to expose the IT in an anaphoric macro.
- Daniel