You mentioned in your original post that pure visual programming languages have issues, and having a ton of experience with one (Simulink), I wouldn't disagree

You mentioned in your original post that pure visual programming languages have issues, and having a ton of experience with one (Simulink), I wouldn't disagree - especially as the 'codebase' size increases. However a hybrid visual/code approach can work quite well, in my experience; see Stateflow and MATLAB Coder, which are embedded within the graphical Simulink environment.