I've sometimes thought that a functional language would be the ideal platform to usher in a purely graphical style of programming;
I don't understand why so many people talk about graphical programming, i.e. putting together functions, arguments, definitins etc. with the mouse instead of the keyboard, drawing arrows instead of naming etc.
No wonder it didn't succeed. It would be much less convenient than typing text and less readable too.
That's not necessarily correct. If 'graphical' isn't taken too literally, you can think of a dialog per function with the possibility to specify pre and post conditions, tests, comments, etc. Then it would be possible to view only things your are interested in: default code, exception handling, interfaces, ... without cluttering the screen with 'code of no interest'. I agree that putting together programs just by click and point would be tedious. But _viewing_ programs this way could be advantagous. What do you think? Best wishes, Markus