[dkersten]

> I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's.

I agree with this. I've never used Houdini, but I have used Max/MSP and after using that, always found the horizontal visual programming systems very clunky and, as you say, they just feel like they take up a lot lot more space. Of course, Max's nodes are quite compact in comparison to something like Blueprints, but horizontal ones always are because each additional input/output makes the node one connection taller, while with a vertical layout you tend to fit many connections in the available width (of course, connection labels aren't clearly visible in that case, but I find that's something you get accustomed to).

Personally, I greatly prefer a vertical layout for visual programming systems.