[sea-shore]

My assumption on what I have heard so far is that.. Ive been amazed for a good while now by the on-line-system from Engelbart, Sketchpad by Sutherland, Smalltalk from Xerox PARC, Nelsons Xanadu and later Bret Victors demos. They where/are visually and philosophically strong, and seemingly inspired countless weaker systems that in turn somehow got picked up as the "industry standard".

Compromises where made, quick-fixes on quick-fixes made text interfaces just usable enough, sunk costs grew and habits formed. The visual programming I see in game-engines now are carrying those habits with it, because to build a language of nodes you first have to learn the ways of ASCII code.

And from what I understand, hardware is optimised for what ever software is popular enough to sell, so even if the software changed, the hardware would take longer. It takes an awesome goal to justify starting over on a truly visual interaction path when there is a system that almost, kinda works. And what-ifs are not in budget.