Well, perhaps why are we still using text-only to code?
I mean, the thing is, books are mostly text, but there are also illustrations (photos, artwork, graphs, charts, etc) that help enhance the content in the book.
A picture is worth 1000 words does happen quite a bit, and it shows how one picture can remove a ton of wordy description in both clarity, conciesness and ease of expression.
In many cases code is written to interact with computers.. it is true as you say:"A picture is worth 1000 words" but only if its referred to humans..
Heck, we can start with basic charts and tables - when you need to consult a chart or table, why do we have to literally code them in? Can't we just say "this is a chart with input X and output(s) y". and just include it, and the compiler automatically generate code to handle looking up data? Same with a table of data - you put it in the code as a table, the computer figures it out and may even offer interpolation.
Now you have source code where the chart is easy to understand and the amount of written code is less because the compiler generates the actual translations and encoding of the table.
maybe, in a remote future, machines will require no programming skill at all to be configured and they'll interact with humans the same way humans interact each other.. but actually I think we are so dramatically far from that future..
If you refer to creating charts and tables destined to humans without writing code, there are many tools in a perfect WYSIWYG style already available, even if when it comes to be more specific, a bit of code is sometimes needed.
That said, personally I find really fascinating the idea of coding without writing, using other ways.. sometimes i tend to visualize in my mind objects, methods, classes , data streams and so on like colourful pipes and nodes interconnecting each other in a 3d field.. but this is just because of my synesthesia I think :D
