> Why Visual Programming Languages have failed...? I wouldn't say that is the case, because Scratch is quite popular (for example) and hangs around 20th among

> Why Visual Programming Languages have failed...? I wouldn't say that is the case, because Scratch is quite popular (for example) and hangs around 20th among programming languages on the TIOBE index. If you look at the RPA world, UiPath promotes itself as a Visual Programming tool, and it's quite popular as well. However, there are some who complain about UiPath's "boxes on top of boxes". It tends to obscure being able to reason about the code and see important details, which gets hidden under other boxes. And you have to do a lot of typing anyway. The criteria for what it means to be a success as a VPL, is arguably inappropriate, if you are saying it must be in the top 10 of programming languages. VPLs can and have found various niches, which might be the best they can do, for now. The problem with VPLs is often "visual overload", where at a certain level of complexity, you are dealing with an entangled spider-web, twisted spaghetti, or straight up clusterf*ck. Also, not quite sure what the insistence on little lines for many creators are all about, which only makes devolving into eye burning spaghetti only faster. People usually don't want to deal with such a mess, thus rather read or type out the code, so they can have greater clarity and readability. In addition to that, many of us are used to reading and typing. Consequently, it might be argued that an collapsible outline is a better way to represent code. After all, we often do this when typing (books, PowerPoint, etc...). Particularly when dealing with the imperative or functional styles, which may lend themselves better to being represented in that way, where names can be headings. Probably you want to be able to easily hide or expand to more complex representations. It seems to me that any VPL will not be able to beat typing out code for the majority at any time in the near future. Still, at the simpler levels or for the younger, Scratch shows that certain VPLs can be usable and find a place. Maybe the way forward is to build on what has had some success, and figure out how to make it more visually manageable.