Many people have suggested ASCII text files might not be the best way to present source code. On the other hand, plain text has a lot of benefits, not least of which is the huge ecosystem of tools built around consuming and producing it.

A lot of what we use today is extended from our analog past: email, digital books, and digital photos are more or less direct carryovers from physical letters, books, and photos. And this tendency has bled into hardware products: We’ve extended $0.05 pencils and $0.005 paper by creating $200 digital pencils and $1,000 digital tablets. By carrying forward some of the elegance of pencil and paper into the digital realm, we cheat ourselves out of discovering entirely new approaches.