Sometimes I wonder if a hybrid approach could work. Specifically, a language that generally looks like Python or JavaScript, but also allows emoji as variable or function names. You could keep the advantages of text-based languages, since you can still search and diff, but also lets you use higher-level visual abstractions that images provide. I've started experimenting with something like this, but it's still not ready for real-world use: https://github.com/hugs/wildcard/blob/master/example/konami....