• Max/MSP / PureData seems to be local maximum
• most VPLs weaken naming - instead of giving names to things, you make connections between unnamed things
• VPLs require constant jumping between mouse and keyboard (something I tried solving with DAS-UI)

I don't think that the complexity issue (...) is essential. I think it's self-imposed by current visual language designers. Perhaps that's because the handful of visual languages that got traction (and thus the benefit of countless hours of design & development effort) are created for people who aren't computer scientists. These languages only need to be sufficient for solving a domain problem, not for advancing the art of the visual PL.

• some ideas/prompts from Ivan:
  • use more of "visual" - borrow ideas from what designers are used to
  • layers - like in Photoshop
  • color-with-meaning - tags in Finder
  • shapes-with-meaning - using shapes to represent types, etc.
  • animation-with-meaning - step-debugger that plays things "slowly", Hest has even playback in reverse
  • possibly allowing programmer to specify what meaning they want to attach to which visual representation

The fact that current visual languages are built of monochromatic text, a few box shapes, and a few colors of line, is a tremendous failure of imagination.

• data-layers
• data-visualization / code-visualization (simulator, canvas for programming)