I think some sort of visual paradigm is where we will end up. Something like Star Trek, where the system architecture and modules are visually represented in 3D space, and you see how the organization changes with realtime low-latency animation representing the changes as they are made. So you are still in control but just at a higher level. I see some prototypes and weak implementations of this sort of thing but surprised at how little is out there.
I kno you're not suggesting the visual system would drive coding at all or that it'd be a way to visually code (see: scratch). You seem to mean it as a visualization of the current code base. I'm hoping Google's code wiki is the first step in this direction. One thing I always thought was a problem with visual systems like this was understanding the codebase's architectural design at a level yu can't programmatically get out via a syntax tree analysis. Google's code wiki seems to be using an LLM to figure out the high-level structure of the code and then building the flowchart and diagrams from that understanding. Obviously there's gonna be issues and misunderstanding but I think that's the first step in the direction you're talking about. First it's text, mermaid diagrams and 2d. Next it's a 3d visual world of your codebase. AWESOME stuff. Someone @ Google.
The problem with all existing GUI coding system is that they make it really hard to make anything other than the types of things they were designed to make. You could do it, but you have to leave the path and get into the weeds of how the system works, which usually has several layers of opinionated code structures on top of the underlying language it's compiling to.
An AI visual/GUI coding system might be able to address that at a more modular level, but it would still come at the cost of transparency and reproducibility.
I'm not suggesting the visual system would driving the coding at all. I'm saying that it would be a visualization of your current code base as built by the LLM.
