Way back in a previous life I made a living building a visual programming tool and language to specify simulations. After many years of work it became clear that visual programming works very well in industries that already have a well established visual paradigm. We had great success with simulating hydraulic systems by letting folks specify them with standard piping and instrumentation diagrams. The cooling system simulation for the space station simulator ended up being built that way with our system, as were many simulations of nuclear power plant cooling systems. However, after you do P&i diagrams and electronic schematics you very quickly run out of well established visual paradigms. Uml is just not useful in the way that a piping diagram is.
As to text, a colleague once described the best feature of a text specification of code was "visual rhyme". You know, when you can look at a block of code and feel how it ebbs and flows. That's from the old days, I don't know if functional code rhymes like Fortean did.
As to text, a colleague once described the best feature of a text specification of code was "visual rhyme". You know, when you can look at a block of code and feel how it ebbs and flows. That's from the old days, I don't know if functional code rhymes like Fortean did.