I can probably type 3 lines of source code in the time that it takes me to drag a block from the sidebar onto my document and then connect the inputs and output

I can probably type 3 lines of source code in the time that it takes me to drag a block from the sidebar onto my document and then connect the inputs and outputs to other nodes. As such, I think Blender handled this very well. You can set up the material node graph both visually and through a scripting command line.