Crosscut

Here's another thing about storing a pre-compiled representation of your code in a structured database: You don't have to retain any formatting information from the original plain text representation, which means that all formatting can be automatic.

In language ecosystems where automatic formatting is widespread, it is typically well-regarded. I myself, after being a critic for a time, have come around to see its advantages and would not want to do without it. But a code database goes one step further: There is only auto-formatting. You can't avoid it, unless you somehow edit the database directly.

A side effect of this approach, is that formatting only happens locally, on demand. Everybody could work with the same code, using their own preferred formatting rules, and it would just work. We could even have completely different syntaxes for the same language, if we wanted.