> Text-based programming is limited in dimensionality. This can become very constraining.
> When you write text-based code, you are also restricted to 2 dimensions, but it's really more like 1.5 because there is a heavy directionality bias that's like a waterfall, down and across.
These are two really good points. Text-based code is just a constrained version of a visual programming environment. So far most attempts at VP have attempted to represent code in terms of nodes and lines (trees), but that does not necessarily need to be the case.
The interesting about VP is that is presents a way to better map the concept and structure of programming as an abstract concept to how we physically interface with our coding environments.
It's far from likely that character and line-based editing is the mode of the future. Line-editing maps to the reality of programming in, to my eyes, such a limited way that is seems the potential for new interfaces, and modes of representation is wide open.
It's not that, as some people stubbornly say, there's no better alternative to text-based programming, but I think we just haven't conceived of a better way yet. We're biased to think in a certain way because most of us have programmed in a certain way almost solely by text and most of our tools are built to work with text. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the way we've done things is the best way indefinitely.
There's so much unexplored territory. VR opens up new frontiers. What if the concepts of files, lines, workspaces were to map to something else more elemental to programming as an abstract concept. What if we didn't think so much in terms of spacial and physical delineations, and instead something else? Blind programmers have a different idea of what an editor is. Spreadsheet programs "think" in terms of cells in relation to one another. What about different forms of input? Dark Souls can be beaten on a pair of bongos. Smash Bros players mod their controllers because their default mode of input isn't good enough at a high level. Aural and haptic interfaces are unexplored. Guitars and pianos are different "interfaces" to music. Sheet music is not a pure representation of music.
I think there's the mistaken belief that text == code, that text is the most essential form of code. Lines, characters are not the essential form of code. As soon as we've assigned something a variable name, we've already altered our code into a form to assist our cognition. Same with newlines, comments, filenames, the names of statements and keywords. When we program in terms of text, we're already transforming our interpretation of code and programming; we've already chosen and contrained ourselves to a particular palette.
What is the most essential form of code are (depends on the language, but generally) data structures and data flow. So far, our best interpretation of this is in the form of text, lines, characters, inputted by keyboard onto a flat screen - but this is still just one category of interpretation.
All this is to say is that text is not necessarily the one and only way, and it's too soon to say that it's the best way.