[flohofwoe]

"Low code" and "no code" solutions have existed for as long as computers exist (for instance to automate tasks, author shaders, or describe simple gameplay logic), yet they were always specialized niche solutions and never replaced "freestyle coding". If such a thing has been tried over and over again for half a century but hasn't had a breakthrough and replaced the alternatives I think it's likely that this also won't happen in the next 50 years.

[dagmx]

I feel like many people forget how many "no-code" solutions have existed over the decades. It's been the dream that so many people have chased.

The solutions get better over time, but the issue is the people who can code don't consider them as anything more than toys, while the ones who are empowered by them, now make things they couldn't before.

[scoopertrooper]

Even in mathematics, a field which is much more amenable to graphical representation, textual descriptions still dominate textbooks and graphics are only used to help illustrate certain concepts with simplified problems.

Part of the problem there is dimensionality, a 2D surface can only show a projection of a problem in 2D space. The highest level of dimensionality that most humans can reason about when projected onto 2D space is 3D. There are workarounds for this, such as show multiple different dimensions projected onto 2D space side-by-side, but there are limits to the effectiveness of this and the amount of screen available.

A graph can easily show you that a ball thrown in the air will follow a parabolic path, but can it a single graph also incorporate factors such as ball diameter, wind direction, initial velocity, gravity, and atmospheric density? A creative graph maker might be able to capture some of these elements together, but not all. A program must capture them all together.

Most programs have an extremely high degree of dimensionality, so they are innately poorly suited to generalised description with graphical approaches.

The most we can ever really hope for is visual domain specific languages that restrict the dimensionality of manageable levels.