I'm curious on this. Do you have links that go over this? I've not seen a hard distinction that models are graphical, pretty much ever. The very idea of "machine learning models" flies in the face of that, as I've rarely seen machine learning models presented in a graphical way.

Best I can think in this direction, is UML? But that is an odd one, because it isn't that "models" are graphical, but those are specifically models of code artifacts. A model of another modeling language, as it were.

Reading back over the top comment, I assumed that the poster meant they started seeing their coding as modeling of a problem domain. Not that they weren't still coding, somewhat.

Disclosure, I was an EE way back when. We had plenty of numerical models for how things worked. We even had verilog to model circuits using what looks a lot like "traditional" software.

That all said, if I just haven't kept up and "model" is moving in meaning, I wouldn't be too shocked. :D