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    ... but you do get a lot of editor features out of the box. Consider expanding this answer a bit, it's a very interesting technology which deserves going a bit more into detail of the advantages of not storing source code as text. E.g. as I answered on this question on tabs vs. spaces. Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 17:24
  • AST could be saved in human readable format and not in binary. can you now with linux tools for example replace every method in code that takes as parameter serializable object? it would be very hard to write, but AST make that very easy. Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 22:58
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    People continually make this mistake. The AST makes it easier than if you have just raw text. But for anything interesting, you need a bunch of additonal information: control and data flow, symbol tables, range analysis, ... ASTs help but are only a small part of what is really needed. Commented Nov 12, 2011 at 4:35
  • @Ira Baxter, of course it is easier with AST. But it is much harder to integrate into the existing infrastructure. Commented Nov 12, 2011 at 13:09