I also work with a distributed embedded system that uses dataflow. The Von Neumann architecture as a revolution of course. But, in a way, it forgot about the natural concurrency of the electronic circuit and how powerful and simple that can be. Dataflow programming can bring some of that back. I remember reading Alan Kay saying something about how programmers should go back and work with a plugboard for a while. Maybe that is what he meant. Its possible to 'program' something with just wires and simple discrete components and that can liberate your thinking.
Yes, I think this is the main insight of the "revolutionary" part of FBP. It's not there to make everything look like a circuit board, but to be the template for the parts of software that are well-suited for the paradigm - which, if factored out properly, could be a lot of them, more than we use today.
The tricky part isn't in whether the abstraction works, but how we go about introducing it. And the downfall of most visual languages is in burdening themselves with too much power, which I don't think FBP is guilty of. It's evolved from production systems that were still coded in textual forms, but architected - on paper - with the diagrams.
