Some people say there is a reason for text being used in programming, of course there is a reason: the terminal, that evolved from the teletype, that evolved from the typing machine and morse codes.

For someone to make a new system you need two things:

1- Completely rethink and redesign how things are done.

2- Modify all the tools in use today. This is the biggest part by far. The amount of work you have to do is so much that most people will just choose to continue evolving over the current system.

E.g for making your own visual language you not only have to develop the language itself, but make the compiler also visual, and the debugger also visual, but the tools you could modify, like llvm are text based and terminal based. Modifying llvm for it is hell. And consider yourself lucky if you have to modify llvm, because in the past it was gdb with monolithic design and no libraries.

An example of a redesign was Xerox PARC GUI. Instead of one input-one output development system in the terminal they added 20 or 30 inputs and 20 or 30 outputs. For this they had to use a new programming concept, so they had to use object oriented programming(without it handling 20 inputs-outputs at the same time becomes so hard it is in practice impossible), that at the same time forced them to develop their own tools in order to see object oriented data structures and methods.

Any modern UI development inherits from Xerox design.

Another paradigm change was the Iphone: it forced every smartphone to have hardware acceleration video and touchscreen and used it as input methods.

People like Bret Victor and MathBox creator are trying to redesign the whole concept using new tools like GPU programming and video displays. I agree with them. The current system is so wrong , even when it is the only thing we have.