I've often thought about similar idea(s), the program is constructed out of nested components, almost like LEGOs. When we play with LEGOs we don't need a "programming language". Or do we?
But what is a "language"? It is a set of "legos" of different types like 'verbs', 'nouns', 'adjectives' which can be combined in many different ways, but only according to the lego-rules of syntax. Some lego-pieces can not be combined together.
The ways LEGOs can be combined is a "syntax definition" the designers at the LEGO headquarters came up with. LEGOS are a language.
So I don't think it is possible to program computers without a programming language. Even configuration needs some kind of language to give you the flexibility you need.
Lego created a visual programming language for their mindstorms system that is exactly this. It's very similar to scratch and while it lets you get things done and you can build some pretty amazing things with tools like that. The ... second order tooling... just isn't there. We have a huge amount of tools running around that can deal with code as text, but there are no analogous tools for these visual programming environments.
I've dug into some of these tools in the past, wrote some projects using things in the 'creative coding' space like quartz composer, touch designer, vvv ... at a certain point the visual clutter gets you and, at least in my experience, it was just faster to rewrite in a creative coding framework like openframeworks/c++.
But what is a "language"? It is a set of "legos" of different types like 'verbs', 'nouns', 'adjectives' which can be combined in many different ways, but only according to the lego-rules of syntax. Some lego-pieces can not be combined together.
The ways LEGOs can be combined is a "syntax definition" the designers at the LEGO headquarters came up with. LEGOS are a language.
So I don't think it is possible to program computers without a programming language. Even configuration needs some kind of language to give you the flexibility you need.