Are there any visual scripting languages that aren't terrible? The system in unreal works but every time I use it I find myself wanting a text editor (I have spent years learning to program well, be that C++ or shaders, just let me do that!).
I think the main issue with most general purpose visual programming languages is, that they are still languages. So they are modeled in a way that resembles a text representation and can often be mapped to a sequence of symbols (a language). However, there are far less tools if you leave the explicit text representation (things like compatible editors, version control, etc.) so it comes down to being an over-the-top syntax highlighting at the expense of the before mentioned other tools. So, I think that visual programming would only become a viable alternative if it were to let go of the ideas of textual programming (language based) and become fully graph based.
If it's general purpose, then I agree that visual languages always seem to be an annoyance. If it's ___domain-specific, that's another story, since many domains are all about connecting blocks together. The most common use case is audio/video signal processing, where it works well if you're working above a certain level of abstraction.
The 'Vop' (Vex OPerator) context in SideFX Houdini is the best 'node-based' graphical programming environment that I know of - however you're always working at something like a 'shader'-level. It's strength is in automatic use of SIMD and built-in parallelism (would not be a good choice to write an app in though!)
Yes. The official node system can be used to script materials/shaders, image compositing, and there are a few excellent plugins to make it stretch to procedural modelling.
Are there any visual scripting languages that aren't terrible? The system in unreal works but every time I use it I find myself wanting a text editor (I have spent years learning to program well, be that C++ or shaders, just let me do that!).