In 1985 there was a great visual database system called File Vision—my fun introduction to database design. And it was highly intuitive to the user—almost like Pivot Viewer three decades later (https://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/pivotviewer/). And LabView also exploited block programming for complex lab workflows (https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/labview.html).

The problem is not fundamental to this GUI approach but to the high overhead of “keeping up” with changes in underlying core core. The GUI adds a serious overhead and it rarely pays.