[seanmcdirmid]

Actually, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Text excels at abstractice capability, relationships are less explicit via name and procedure bindings, they can be even be compressed via loops and functions. On the other hand, relationships are very much explicit and in your face in a patch/wire visual language.

This is just a trade off, visual languages are better at being explicit but worse at being abstract. When you think about it, that makes sense: a picture requires the commitment of detail that an abstract textual description does not. Incidentally, simply designing a more abstract visual notation is no easy way out of this, because the notation will inevitably resemble text as it becomes more abstract.

Also, most VPLs have some amount of textual language I them. A patch/wire VPL will go text on patch names and port labeling. Scratch, in contrast, is basically graphically edited text with some visual elements. This makes judging the entire visual paradigm even more tricky, because it isn’t homogenous at all.

[crimsonalucard]

What is text but a visual abstraction? The same abstractions can be made with different geometry that isn't restricted to lines and left to right reading order.