>>56it's an idea that appeals to me but it has too many problems with it - and you'll notice them when you try working with actual visual and dataflow languages, whether it's something like labview or some custom bullshit designed for an obscure game engine (I did both).
basically, we have plenty of good, varied tools for working with pure text. dozens of text editors (inb4 vi vs emacs), multiple IDEs (general purpose or language-specific), regex (which I hate but it is useful) and - if you're using a decent OS - command-line tools ranging from simple grep to DSLs like awk or sed.
the bigger your project gets the more you start noticing the lack of such tools for visual programming and dataflows. usually, you're either stuck with an annoying proprietary IDE or have to manually alter the internal representation of dataflows or whatever other bullshit your software uses. if you're lucky, you end up basically reverting to normal programming but in an obscure language. if you're unlucky, everything is represented by XML or binary blobs (keep in mind binary blobs are superior to XML because reverse engineering is actually quite fun).