What you say is true. Text is way more expressive, but sometimes it is difficult to spot the overall code structure just by using text. What Statebox does is this: It implements Petri nets as categories and maps them functorially to a "normal" functional programming semantics. What this means is that: - You draw the structure of your code in a behavior-oriented way using petri nets. This step is completely visual. - You use a ton of formal tools to verify that this net has nice properties. - You map places and transitions of the net to datatypes and functions, respectively.

You see that in this approach nets serve the purpose of giving an high-level understanding of how the code behaves. You still have the freedom that you get by using text in filling the net with meaning, but you gain also this high-level overview that saves a ton of work!