When you know where it is you're going, nothing so far beats text for efficiency, and until we can literally send our thoughts to a computer with enough precision to express complex logic, I don't see that changing.

I looked at it with a new angle and I think I see the pitfalls of it now. Just thinking about which form of communication is more precise and efficient in natural language, written text actually says more. At the end of the day, it is an actual "form" of communication. On the logic side, it does make more sense to use text for the core stuff, but now I am thinking in terms of layers (back-end, and front-end). Text underneath and nodes on top. Each new node is a result of the underlying text. Best of both worlds. I am feeling like I made a topic on this already now, but the original question remains.

One of the developers say that they are close to making the "language" turing complete.

Turing completeness doesn't say much about the actual utility of a given programming language.

Brainf*ck and Whitespace are both Turing-complete. See the definition of a Turing tarpit.

At the end of it all, it is all about I/O, and you only need one data type to make it work (Boolean).

Actually you don't need any data types if the language is object oriented from first principles.

Turing completeness doesn't say much about the actual utility of a given programming language.

Good point, haha.

Let's say that I was the first one to think of flappy bird, and I released it and made 50,000 a day. I made a close enough clone in a matter of minutes with the app, and with a little more time, I could have an exact duplicate. If I looked at his source code, I probably wouldn't understand a thing, but I got the same effect with less effort.

In this sense, it makes the textual programming seem senseless, and the actual idea matters more now. I think it makes the process of "idea to product" faster.

I have been downloading games from the app store and trying to re-create a similar system in Gamepress. Angry birds, and flappy bird are very possible.

The only reason the textual programming seems senseless is because someone used textual programming to create your Gamepress.

If all you are interested in is the end product then of course you can just be a consumer of things like Gamepress.

Lots of us here are as or more interested in the process than the end result. I can't personally imagine anything more mind numbing than linking nodes together like this to make a game. It is not something I would do for fun.

It is not something I would do for fun.

And spending hours digging through core dumps with a debugger is something you do for fun?

I think that's a very weak argument against graphical programming. I certainly don't consider the hours I've spent chasing down a missing semicolon the 'fun' part of programming...

Yes, I enjoy debugging. I enjoy the challenge of making something work myself rather than just using someone else's solution.

I'm not saying this way or that way is better, just making the point that many of us enjoy the process rather than the end product which, unless you are wasting someone else's time or money, is absolutely fine.

just making the point that many of us enjoy the process rather than the end product

And I think it's very strange to consider something like Gamepress an 'end product', rather than a tool to enable that same 'process', albeit in a slightly different incarnation.

Sure, someone programmed Gamepress to do what it does. But the same can be said for your IDE, your compiler, and your OS. And I don't see anyone advocating game development via punch cards...

edit; Never mind, long day.

It comes down to personal preference, really. I hate graphical programming languages (At least, I think I would. I haven't used them but they look messy/convoluted), but I could see the draw of them for others. To me, text just seems cleaner.

Also I'm pretty sure both textual and graphical languages would require debugging.