I don't think version control has anything to do with it.
If there were a highly compelling and productive general purpose visual language, storing the data as text, and even providing tools to aid in things like merge conflicts, would be minor details. But when you actually dig into things like (the excellent) Prograph and its descendents, you find out that shapes and lines are actually less intuitive than text for nontrivial code bases. Contrary to what one might expect, a picture is not worth a thousand words.
Perhaps a new visual paradigm will be introduced that changes things, but there's really nothing today that competes with even your least favorite popular text based language.
Why wouldn't you say the examples I gave above don't compete with "your least favorite popular text based language"? My whole point is that not only do they compete, but they are actually winning in most use cases outside of software engineering. Once you take that assumption (which I'd love to hear someone debate), the question just becomes why do plain text programming languages win for some uses cases and not others?
The discussion of "general purpose" programming languages doesn't really make sense with respect to visual programming languages because visual programming languages necessarily exist within a GUI, and GUIs themselves don't scale to general purpose. So what we actually have is specialized visual programming languages that double as (or exist within) specialized GUI applications.
A system that appears to be working quite well in creating much more efficient systems for non-programmers to accomplish programmatic tasks. This kind of poor mapping of textual programming languages to certain problems is why the Stripe globe is state of the art text-based rendering (https://stripe.com/blog/globe), when people are doing algorithmic architecture in Houdini (https://mvsm.com/project/imac-pro). It's not even comparable, text-based languages are getting absolutely decimated outside of software engineering by better tools that leverage visual programming languages.
Your link to "algorithmic architecture" was such a letdown. These guys weren't doing architecture, they were just making a flashy Apple ad! Can you expand on what you mean when you call the Stripe globe and the Apple ad "state of the art"? I assume you don't mean that these are some of the most technically proficient graphics you've seen, because that would just be silly.
And comparing something developed by a design studio with god-knows-how-much rendering time to something designed in-house that runs live in your browser seems a little strange.
For context, "Grasshopper" has been a nodes-and-boxes plugin for Rhino 3D—a 3D modeling app—for many years. By "new" they mean that it has been promoted from plugin to just part of Rhino itself. But if you look for people doing things with Grasshopper, you'll find a ton of examples.
Yes, I would consider the examples "some of the most technically proficient graphics", but you can find practically infinite examples of impressive procedural work done with visual-programming-language-based tools.
I'd love to find more impressive examples using text-based programming languages though, those are harder to find.
I agree that comparing a video to something that runs live obviously isn't fair, but that's not really the axis I'm concerned about here. Plain-text code seems to struggle at the artistic level vs. visual tools, not the performance level. E.g., the counterargument I'm looking for would be impressive visuals created purely in code that's either pre-render (e.g., as a video), or running live, I don't really care, I just want to see visually impressive work.
If there were a highly compelling and productive general purpose visual language, storing the data as text, and even providing tools to aid in things like merge conflicts, would be minor details. But when you actually dig into things like (the excellent) Prograph and its descendents, you find out that shapes and lines are actually less intuitive than text for nontrivial code bases. Contrary to what one might expect, a picture is not worth a thousand words.
Perhaps a new visual paradigm will be introduced that changes things, but there's really nothing today that competes with even your least favorite popular text based language.