alt Hacker NewsAn image is not a good representation either. Where is heat? Where is size? Where is gravity? Images are useful, but so is text, each in a different way. The nice thing about text is that it encodes a much larger representation of something in only a few. So I can type 'sun' and it's useful enough to get my meaning without me showing you a picture every once in a while.
So yes in certain context, a diagram may be more useful to get a point across. But once that shared understanding has taken place, Text are more economical.
A lot of foundational aspects of computing are too abstract in nature to be able to do a good 2D or 3D representation. So what we do is transforming them into streams of symbols and do symbolic manipulations on them. And with symbolic manipulation, you get abstraction.
The main issue is that a lot of people are not good at symbolic representation and manipulation. Because it's abstract and it's entirely a product of the mind.
The power of computers is that they can do the tedious part of symbolic manipulations, repeatedly and without failing. And with peripherals interfacing, they can translate symbols from/to reality.
> The power of computers is that they can do the tedious part of symbolic manipulations, repeatedly and without failing. And with peripherals interfacing, they can translate symbols from/to reality.
Exactly what I am implying: using the computer to provide a better abstraction is what is needed.
I agree that text has a certain universality however as you also say, a lot folks don't work with symbols, they work with images (for example) or colours (synesthesia) or shapes perhaps.
Besides move up in dimensions is a continuation of a natural progression in computing: cogs, switchs, punch cards, keyboards, mouse, touch .... VR, AR etc. Currently we're (coders) are somewhere between keyboard and mouse while others (most folks that use smart phones) are at touch. Smart phones users are also programmers who code their device using largely visual concepts (at least I've not seen anyone set their alarm using a terminal on a smart phone!).
Now "Oh but it's not possible to represent those concepts that we work with visually, only text will do" argument doesn't really hold water since it just demonstrates a lack of imagination to find a way to use other representations for those concepts that are essential to programming. Strangely that was possible when moving from switches to keyboards, why shouldn't it be possible even further.
Recently I had the thought that in fact, textual programming (as a paradigm) is now the sole domain of AIs. I've heard so many coders say they have not coded a line of code in months/years, AI is doing all the coding for them. Hence, I think, we humans (those of us here who are humans) should step up to the next domain for coding: 2D and then 3D and explore improved abstractions for the concepts we try to represent in a textual manner (even these concepts are abstractions of the real world).