This is not a criticism, I think there is a place for visual languages, and I hope somewhere out there in idea space is one we all could use. I'd love to code on my tablet with a stylus.<p>But personally I find these very hard to use. Scratch drove me insane, I couldn't work out which order things were getting executed, it was a real pain.<p>Despite this, non-programmers actually seem to like visual programming systems. So my question is, what aspect of programming is the visual system removing (or adding) that makes it appealing to non-programmers? The syntax is still there, the semantics are the same, all the usual variables, conditionals, loops, functions, etc, are there, just harder to read.<p>But something must be changing, or maybe it's just a perception thing? Or is it the removal of text? Or maybe it's the bricks, you can't accidentally plug something in the wrong place.