What is code in a text editor if not a legible 2D planar representation of the "real code"? The real difference between text and a graph of definition-use edges and nodes is that the text representation does not have any intrinsic information on the real code's structure and does not display definition-use edges - at least by default. Most code editors provide some way (via LSP/etc) to display the edges however - usually as a list of the other end of the edge in a dialog/window/similar separate from the code. Given that some textual representation (e.g. variable names) of source and target is possible, a graph-displaying editor can just "abbreviate" an edge (or: make it implicit) by using the other end of the edge. If a graph editor makes all edges implicit by a certain strategy of using names/whitespace/parentheses/etc, the result would be a text representation a text editor displays. The main issue is not in difference of display, but in the mode of editing: a text editor allows much more partial input that violates the structure a graph is expected to have: malformed definitions of programming constructs that are neither a node nor an edge in the graph. A graph editor must either allow such partial input in some way (e.g. enter temporary textual representation, transform into group) or use a different input model that doesn't allow such unrepresentable input, e.g. using mostly mouse, or an editing keyboard language like Vim's objects & verbs. On the other hand a text editor requires you to agree on a formatting style with your colleagues and running autoformatters, looking past useless formatty diffs in code review, fixing syntax errors, dangling else,...