This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Mark Levison. Original Post: Extensible programming Feed Title: Mark Levison Feed URL: /WebLog/error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/WebLog/mlevison/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Musings on No Touch Deployment, .NET development and photography Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Mark Levison Latest Posts From Mark Levison

Rereading Greg Wilson's article (Extensible Programming for the 21st Century) and a few others in the past weeks, has made me think a bit more.

I'm don't think that the underlying representation matters as much as having a common tool to manipulate it. In the case of Java/Eclipse (or C#/VS .NET) - storing the results (the code) in text is fine. What we need is for Eclipse (or MS) to expose the asbtract syntax tree to the various plugins. In many cases these plugins will bypass the text editor and display the program in their own way. I think this allows us to make the leap to the next generation tool without having to replace the infrastructure (ie new source code control systems etc.)