Just because it hasn't been done well doesn't mean it can't be. And as other comments have pointed out, visual programming works extremely well in domain-specif

Just because it hasn't been done well doesn't mean it can't be. And as other comments have pointed out, visual programming works extremely well in domain-specific contexts; the challenge is to translate that to general-purpose programming. The core of the problem is twofold: first, visualisation of higher-order functions in a way that doesn't suck; second, an easy way to move back and forth between details and the big picture. Those are two things at which text is already very, very effective. Though the project is still very young, my horse in this race is a statically typed concatenative programming language. Visual programming is naturally point-free, and visualisation of higher-order functions is actually rather easy if you have static typing. Most importantly, the program can be edited textually or graphically. I regularly see comments and articles here that indicate a desire for such a tool. They give me the resolve to keep working to fill that gap.