Any programming paradigm is going to at minimum have something like an if statement. Say you wanted to do something when two items compare equal, in text you c

Any programming paradigm is going to at minimum have something like an if statement. Say you wanted to do something when two items compare equal, in text you could write something like: if (a == b) { ... } With a visual metaphor, you are going to have to have some way of setting up entities representing the 'if', and the '==' predicate, along with references to wherever 'a' and 'b' are defined, and a way of getting to the block of code that executes when the condition is true. I find it hard to conceive that any kind of direct manipulation of code at this level is going to be better than text, whether you're trying to understand it or modify it. I grant you visual tools for manipulating higher level stuff like data schema's, gui's, and so forth work well, but I'm guessing they'll always need text for the underlying logic.