Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

If your data structures are more complex and require more convoluted logic, which is more often the case than not, then the benefits of visual programming diminish and the downsides are much more apparent.

The visual language I always think of is LabVIEW. It is very different than a textual language.

It's the same difference between writing mathematical proofs as systems of equations vs. proof by drawing a diagram, or making a visualization.

Proofs can be written using both methods, but if you have a strong command of the written/symbolic vocabulary, it is faster and more succinct.

Put another way: I can describe the landscape of a lush, green Tuscan Countryside--with rolling hills, morning dew, and and crisp feeling of the first rays of sun cutting through the mist--in just a few lines. You get a picture in your head, and it is likely very similar to what was in mine.

Imagine now, that we can't use words. We have to draw pictures. It will take much longer to get the same point across. Language--for certain purposes--is more efficient, and more information dense.

That's my hypothesis/feeling.

If I go to the last page of a Google search for C++, it says that it showed me 180 results. 18 pages.

It used to be that Google would tell you an approximation of how many matches they actually had in total for a search of their index but they no longer do anywhere that I am aware of. If there were only two pages of results I might have agreed but when there are 12 pages it will show to me I don't think there is any useful conclusion to be made about the actual total amount of sites that contain these keywords.

However, there is another site that still gives us an approximate count of results. YouTube.

Searching for C++ on YouTube I am told that there are "about 1,010,000 results".

Searching for Unreal Blueprints on YouTube I am told that there are "about 57,800 results".

Searching for UDK Blueprints on YouTube gives "about 18,600 results".

There will be some amount of overlap between the latter two.

I don't know how many of those videos matched only blueprints and was included though.

But let's do another couple of searches.

UDK C++ on YouTube gives "about 11,000 results".

Unreal C++ on YouTube gives "about 60,900 results".

Well, it seems that the words UDK and Unreal are significant when searching on YouTube, since otherwise both of those searches should have given about a million results like the search for just C++ alone did.

So comparing "Unreal C++" and "Unreal Blueprints" on YouTube actually gives a surprisingly high amount of results about blueprints compared to C++ for Unreal, certainly a lot higher than I would have expected. I would have expected at least 25 times as many for C++ but it seems to be almost the same amount of videos for each of those.

Of course one might wonder if even though the words Unreal and UDK might have matched correctly, did the words blueprints and C++? Or do the results include a lot of videos that are about neither blueprints nor C++?

Additionally some amount of videos will have both these words but will not be about the Unreal Development Kit. Instead one video might be something like "Unreal! Secret blueprints confirming conspiracy theory so-and-so confirmed!" You get the idea.