>I still feel like there's an unexplored space where you combine the benefits of both somehow though. Like a code-based CAD but it also has a GUI editor that stays in sync and avoids the need to type in coordinates by hand. That would be extremely difficult though.

I think you can do this if the data representation of operations and values is human readable. The simplest implementation would restrict the language/data format to operations representable in the gui.

Unlike trying to solve the "visual programming" problems, we don't need or desire Turing completeness.

Very interesting indeed!