Visual or graphical programming environments have useful applications, but I think they're always going to be niche. My kids had a lot of fun with Scratch for example, it's a lovely way to learn programming.

The big problem I see with visual programming tools though is that they prescribe the tools you can use to work on the system. I can work on the same Python scripts on Windows, Unix and iOS, in a windowing environment or a console. I can use Submlime Text, Vi, EMACS, Notepad++, whatever I want and configure them however I like. Syntax highlighting even visually distinguishes different aspects of the code in useful ways that even parallels some of the features of graphical coding environments. I can even generate code from other code, or use refactoring tools.

If your graphical tool generates text or something like XML then ok, you can do processing on that, but which is authoritative? The graphical representation or the underlying document? Now all you have is a fancy editor for what's really a text format anyway.

So I think in a lot of ways visual tools complicate things in some ways as much or more than they simplify them in others. I suspect that the domains in which these trade offs prove to be worthwhile are fairly limited.