As a linear medium, text is good for chronology. Visual is multidimensional and much better for topology. It's no accident that many succesful visual DSLs mentioned in the comments are dataflow langs. I also think some of the pessimism regarding visual languages is due to how much better text editor tooling is. Still, it would be a good idea to avoid convincing ourselves that our current local minimum is the deepest of 'em all.
Thanks for putting it in such clear words. I thought about "micro" vs "macro", but chronology vs topology is much much better. There are micro algorithms that i wouldn't try to put in diagrams, and huge data mappings that i would perfectly understand with simple arrows and boxes.
Thanks for the kind words! My doctorate was about a DSL for musical signal processors [1]. Current post doc is about programming interfaces - I hope to Show HN in a couple of months!
