It's CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) all over again! This idea rears its (ugly) head every few years. It isn't a help to programmers. The reason we

It's CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) all over again! This idea rears its (ugly) head every few years. It isn't a help to programmers. The reason we use text for programming isn't "because punch cards," though as a former IBM mainframe programmer I appreciate the analogy. It's because text is an incredibly efficient way of communicating even the most complex information. A side note here: One of the reasons for Korea's rise to power as an "Asian Tiger" is that, many moons ago, one of their emperors decided to break away from the Chinese system of pictographs and replace it with a phonetic alphabet, allowing anyone to spell and pronounce words. The result was one of the highest degrees of literacy among nations anywhere. Alphabets are good for communicating with people and with processors, too.