Visual programming, imo, is not popular for general purpose programming largely because there doesn’t presently exist, and it’s unclear if there ever will exist

Visual programming, imo, is not popular for general purpose programming largely because there doesn’t presently exist, and it’s unclear if there ever will exist, general purpose visual programming tools that work well and provide a notable benefit over text-based programming. When you add some constraints in, like for example, the limitations of a spreadsheet, visual programming can work exceedingly well. It works great for these domain specific usages. But honestly, a text document of textual statements is a pretty good way to represent a general purpose programming language made up of procedural statements. You could make a UI like Scratch for other programming languages, but: - the interface would be cluttered and likely not nearly as efficient as just typing - other than virtually eliminating syntax errors its unclear what you are accomplishing - its not easier to break down problems or think procedurally. - You could probably get similar benefits with a hybrid approach, like an editor that is aware of the language AST and works in tokens. So my view is that visual programming is perfectly mainstream and just has not been demonstrated to have substantial benefits for typical general purpose programming languages.