While the digital paradigm has been widely described and commented upon (among others by Stella 2007 and Sahle 2016), there is a crucial aspect that has not been sufficiently underlined, which however could represent a turning point in the history of (digital) philology. It is the case of the use of programming code throughout the different phases of the editorial process, aiming at the realisation of what Barabucci and Fischer (2017) defined as the formalisation of textual criticism. The authors, in their conclusions, state that a “shared formalization would lead to the semi-automatization of the editorial process”, where “the responsibility of the editors would be to describe their choices and decisions”, while that of the computers would be to “deal with applying these rules and decisions in the best way”.