What are your thoughts on a future where code is represented as a structured model, rather than text? Do you think that AI-powered coding assistants benefit from that?

Long ago in the 50s this was even thought of as a kind of “AI” and this association persisted into the 60s. Several Turing Awards were given for progress on this kind of “machine reasoning”.

A slogan that might help you get past the current fads is:

+ for

Every time I brush my hair when it’s dry it poofs up like a poof ball. But if I don’t brush it looks tangled and messy. I know I have some sort of curl or wavy hair, ive tried gels to define curls but it makes my hair frizzy and messy. What do I do?

Another canonical form could be Lisp S-expressions, etc.

First, it’s worth noting that the “syntax recognition” phase of most compilers already does build a “structured model”, often in what used to be called a “canonical form” (an example of this might be a “pseudo-function tree” where every elementary process description is put into the same form — so both “a + b” and “for i := 1 to x do […]” are rendered as

NOT DATA … BUT MEANING!

'There's a huge amount that we don't understand': Why sperm is still so mysterious - BBC

These structures are made precisely to allow programs to “reason” about some parts of lower level meaning, and in many cases to rearrange the structure to preserve meaning but to make the eventual code that is generated more efficient.

/ \ and ⁄ / | \

Most coding assistants — with or without “modern “AI” — also do reasoning and manipulation of structures.

How quickly can you gain muscle by only consuming milk and chicken breasts, without using any supplements such as creatine or whey isolate?

a b i 1 x []

i.e. “operator like things” at the nodes …

in structures, such as:

My waist finally looks like how it did before I had kids but I didn’t lose weight. Why am I still 15 lbs from my starting weight?

plus(a, b) for(i, 1, x, […])

It’s important to realize that “modern “AI” doesn’t understand human level meanings any better today (in many cases: worse!). So it is not going to be able to serve as much of a helper in a general coding assistant.