Abstract Benefits of a Data Flow-Aware Programming Environment

Many programmers write their programs with a primitive text editor that has no knowledge about the edited text. On the other hand, they use ingenious compilers that collect control flow and data flow information to perform optimiza-tions and generate optimized code. We argue that program editors should have the same knowledge about the control flow and data flow of a program. Such editors could help programmers to better understand programs and to be more productive. We propose a data flow-aware programming en-vironment that makes the information that the compiler al-ready computed visible. The bidirectional feedback from the compiler to the programmer and back from the programmer to the compiler enables productive programming and faster debugging.