[zeroname]

What a poor comparison. Have you actually used any CAD software? None of it works like Sketchpad. Design software in general doesn't use shape recognition, that's a pointless gimmick.

> The way forward to visual programming might not be super clear, but we'll get there.

This isn't even visual programming, nor is it a step in the right direction. My text editor has all kinds of visual tools. The data I edit however is textual, which has a lot of benefits.

> If you don't think text-based REPL-style programming is limiting...

I don't think REPLs are very useful for programming either.

> ...I encourage you to check out Bret Victor's explorations of abstraction and direct manipulation.

I'm aware of this stuff, it looks nice, but I don't think you need an entire visual programming language to get that benefit. If I need visualization, there are lots of tools to use.