Code is not a text string

Why does everyone think that source code can be stored in a text string? It's fucking 2014, you morons. The natural data structure for code is a tree, like in XML. Why do I have to put up with someone else's style conventions, superfluous comments, or with shitty generic syntax? If code was stored in XML, the IDE would be able to display it any way I want. One guy likes the {;} shit, another likes FIOC; one guy likes the faggot GNU style guide with a bunch of lines occupied by only one brace, while another likes the manly

void foo(int x) {
return; }

and so on.

So why the fuck is it still a one size fits all paradigm? It's not like a high school student can't write an XML parser these days. The days of Notepad are over. Besides, it's possible to output XML source code as text, as well as parse text code into XML form. So why the fuck is everyone still in the Stone Age? Either I am a genius, or everyone in the programming industry is an idiot.

After you strip the bullshit, XML is trees. However, trees in internal representation add another compilation phase for no benefit because the programmer still operates on text without enforced grammar: You'd either have to insert new code one subtree at a time or deal with data that is invalid more often than not.

Just use Lisp.