Yes - I'm aware of these and have used several. And they all suck in various ways compared to writing code in a capable IDE. I can't imagine a situation where

Yes - I'm aware of these and have used several. And they all suck in various ways compared to writing code in a capable IDE. I can't imagine a situation where given the choice (and assuming sufficient familiarity to be fluent) I would choose a node-based system over writing code. As I said earlier - the main advantage is discoverability (plus a certain robustness against making errors which arise from the constraints). Discoverability is cancelled out by familiarity and if I'm going to use a tool seriously then I will become familiar with it. Every other aspect of visual programming is a disadvantage and in many cases a crippling one. The sheer laboriousness of constructing expressions, the lack of sophisticated refactoring and the amount of busywork tidying up nodes so they aren't a jumble of spaghetti. I think these are solvable but not until there's a way to avoid reinventing the wheel for every single system.