but it doesnt work when you have loops and branching

We managed to make visual programming work well with loops [1] and more or less OK with branching [2]. The trick is to look at loops from a functional perspective (i.e. as iter/map), rather than from imperative.

[1] https://easymorph.com/learn/iterations.html

[2] https://easymorph.com/learn/conditional-workflows.html