[tombert]

Sure, I'll acknowledge that I might have made a bit of a sweeping statement.

I'm not an artist or anything, and while I have made some relatively complex models with Bowler Studio (probably the coolest being a functioning toy elevator for some action figures that I was able to test out digitally before building it IRL, which required a stepper motor and a Z-screw stolen from a broken 3d printer), I'll acknowledge that I am a software engineer first and so of course I stare at plain text multiple hours every day, and that of course defines how I think about problems.

I do think that there are aspects of code-based CAD that do meet some standard of objectivity of being "better", or at least more versatile. I think being able to easily define loops and variables is a feature that is remarkably useful and allows for a lot of flexibility that I haven't really seen in any GUI program.

Also, OpenSCAD renders a 3d image on every file save. You can even have OpenSCAD open and edit in a separate text editor and it still works. Is that not enough graphical feedback?

[jononor]

The mapping from geometry and back to definition (code) is pretty weak in tools like OpenSCAD/CadQuery, compared to a parametric solid modeler like FreeCAD/Fusion360. It is a very indirect manipulation, and requires people to "play computer" (to paraphrase Brett Victor). Only programmers can do it efficiently.