> The final misconception is that visual programmers can do without all the tools that have been developed over the decades to support programming. Consider the

> The final misconception is that visual programmers can do without all the tools that have been developed over the decades to support programming. Consider the long evolution of code editors and IDEs. Visual Studio, for example, supports efficient intellisense allowing the look-up of thousands of APIs available in the base class library alone. I think this point the author makes is an interesting one because I see it form a different perspective. I think the biggest issue is that we mix presentation with representation. > The lack of good source control is another major disadvantage of most visual programming tools. Even if they persist their layout to a textual format, the diffs make little or no sense. At the same time tabs vs spaces is still a thing. In languages which aren't whitespace sensitive, the diffs similarly don't make any real sense in my opinion. I believe (and have no idea how to implement) that the representation of a programming language should be modified more directly and the rendered presentation (textual, visual, interpretive dance) should be irrelevant to the tooling.