[dkersten]

I, like you, was an experienced developer before I ever used Max, but unlike you, I found Max a pleasure to work in and have always wished I could use something like it for my day to day work. I mean, yes, Max had (maybe still does, been some years) some major limitations that prevented it from being used as a general purpose language and yes, some things are simply easier to express in text, but I loved working in Max. I loved not having to name things until I was done experimenting and knew exactly what it did, I loved visually connecting things together. I'm a heavy user of boxes and lines, usually on paper, to help me think through complex problems and I found that in Max, I could do most of my thinking directly in code, rather than having to doodle on paper.

Yes, Max has (had?) a ton of limitations and gotchas, but I don't feel that they're something that couldn't be fixed. Some day, I'd like to try make something Max-like but with what I saw as problems "fixed", but I've never had the time to do it.

> I also find the freeform spatial layout kind of stressful

For me it was the opposite. I found it liberating. I did make very heavy use of abstracting things into smaller components and making sure my visual code didn't look like spaghetti. I loved how clear the flow of my code became.