Copy of my twitter post of May 30, 2020:

Programming languages are secondary.

From Jef Raskin I learned that most of the time people rely on habits, basically work on autopilot. The key to human productivity is to make possible to form habits and capitalize on them.

Humans don't merely write code in a PL. We work with a system: text editor, terminal, test reports, running app, logs viewer, doc viewer. We develop habits, train our fingers and eyes to navigate between these tools. This composition becomes ONE thing is our mental map.

Paths between these tools do not allow to develop habits and work on autopilot. Finding correct version of doc for a particular function in the lib takes conscious effort every time. Reconstruction of possible execution path from log entries is also done manually, consciously.

Finally, there is no universal "undo" for many actions that happen in-between of these tools. It forces human to be aware of possible risks of these actions, make conscious decisions most of the time. This is fact denies capitalization on habit.

It seems that integrated development environments are really not that integrated.

I think we should design most efficient/convenient programming environment first, and only having done that think about adopting/creating a programming language that would fit into it. Programming environment is primary, programming languages are secondary.