alt Hacker News> I wonder whether those that used punch cards said the same about those punch cards?
Oh, absolutely. One statement/line per card, the first 5 columns reserved for labels (how's that for significant whitespace?), the 6th to signal line continuation, the last eight for arbitrary comments/line numbers? People loathed it.
Punch cards are just text editors in primitive form though, ie columns across and lines down. All very 2D.
A visual programming canvas is free of that, and thus can display connections and relationships far more deeply and conveniently than text-based languages.
It's the 2D nature of our languages that has a lot to answer for.