I think there's real value add from a language that's designed to work in an IDE-first way, that uses the GUI not to replace text but to enhance it. The best example I know of this is Scala's implicits: they're not visible in the code itself, but in an IDE you can see where they're coming from (e.g. ctrl-shift-P in IntelliJ), so they're a great way to express concerns that are secondary but not completely irrelevant (e.g. audit logging - basically anything you'd consider using an "aspect" or "decorator" for). Another example is type inference (which a lot of languages have): your types aren't written in the program text, but they're available reliably when editing, so you can use them to express secondary information.
People on HN seem to think programming languages should be designed for a text editor as the primary way of editing, and I think that's a mistake that holds programming culture back (and is why we see these "graphical" languages go too far in the other direction, because the only way to get people to take a proper language editor seriously is to make a language that's impossible to edit in a text editor). Having a canonical plain text representation is important. Having good diff/merge is important. Editor customizability is important. But if you embrace the IDE and build an IDE-first language, without abandoning those parts, you can get a much better editing experience.
People on HN seem to think programming languages should be designed for a text editor as the primary way of editing, and I think that's a mistake that holds programming culture back (and is why we see these "graphical" languages go too far in the other direction, because the only way to get people to take a proper language editor seriously is to make a language that's impossible to edit in a text editor). Having a canonical plain text representation is important. Having good diff/merge is important. Editor customizability is important. But if you embrace the IDE and build an IDE-first language, without abandoning those parts, you can get a much better editing experience.