[WillAdams]

Why did it have to be pixelated in appearance? It would be far more attractive as anti-aliased vector lines and type.

The red highlighting reminds me of electricity in the classic circuit problem game _Rocky's Boots_ on the Apple ][.

As I've posted in similar discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42051536

The problem here, as always is that there isn't an agreed-upon answer for the question:

>What does an algorithm look like?

The problem is expressiveness of such a diagram is bounded by the size of a screen or a sheet of paper, and once one starts to scroll, or can't see the entire flow at a glance, things get complicated.

The node/wire programming folks have this a bit rougher to the point that there are sites such as:

https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com/

https://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com/

I prefer to work visually, but not sure if that's actually valid --- unfortunately https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ doesn't support all of OpenSCAD and https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor has problems with a stylus (I have to leave the Windows Settings app open to toggle stylus behaviour which is enough friction that I don't use it as much as I would otherwise).

There are promising tools though: https://nodezator.com/ and https://ryven.org/ are very cool.

[pjmlp]

The problem is that while on text based languages folks quickly learn to use subroutines and modules/packages, apparently the same concept seems alien to anyone that hasn't done digital circuit design.

Most visual languages, support subroutines and modules/packages as well, no need to design a gigantic piece of spaghetti.

If anything, visual languages make it clear straight away when the code is a mess.

[WillAdams]

Yes, but if one uses subroutines/modules, then one ends up with the wall of text which one was presumably attempting to escape from --- just wrapped up in coloured boxes/connected with lines.

GraphSCAD at least affords an option to add an image to a module representation, preserving some of the visual aspect --- I believe OpenSCAD Graph Editor has that in the works (if it's not already done).

[FrustratedMonky]

For this link you gave

https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com/

What is link to some more background on the 'blueprint' app. I couldn't find it.

[kevindamm]

It's Unreal Engine 4 (the UE4 in the in-body title).. seems all or most of them are in the animations control flow editor. You can find a similar interface in Unity's Animation controller editor, too. Sometimes you'll find this interface in behavior tree editors and shader editors within both UE4 and Unity, also.