i really like this direction but I think direct manipulation like this tends to work so well for manipulating drawings because there's such an immediate feedback loop, you can explore the space of what you're trying to create or to get to where you know you want to get to really fast because you can just see it

with say relational data modelling or implementing a b+ tree, it's harder to directly manipulate i think because you can't see the actual thing you are trying to create because it's abstract

when you see nodes in a node/wire flow or you see UML you can see something you can manipulate, but it's not "direct manipulation" IMO because you're touching the abstract plan for the thing, not the data on disk or an actual binary tree of populated nodes

would love to know if anyone disagrees

more generally on systems when you derive/capture behavior working from the data, not from the logic