[spiralganglion]

I agree — as someone with as much of a design background as a programming background, seeing something like Bubble described as "visual programming" feels a bit offensive. Yes, there's a bit of meaningful visual structure sprinkled here and there throughout their environment. But it's nothing like what one would imagine if they were left to freely ideate about some hypothetical, ideal "visual programming" environment.

In a post-Bret Victor world, we know what such an environment might look like.

Stop Drawing Dead Fish: https://vimeo.com/64895205 Drawing Dynamic Visualizations: https://vimeo.com/66085662

As a visually-minded developer constantly hunting for such tools, and even working on some myself (in a small way — nothing that anyone here will ever end up using, surely), I can assure you that there's enough smoke that eventually we'll see something like what we desire catch fire.

If I had to guess, I'd say we'll see it come out of the world of video games, not web applications. So don't fret that Bubble looks like a step in the wrong direction. They're not building tools for visual thinkers, they're building tools for MBAs.