In software development not all features work out, and with the upcoming release of Godot 4 beta it would appear that the VisualScript visual programming language is one such feature. We went hands on with the visual scripting functionality way back in 2016 when it was first added and honestly it never felt like an improvement or viable alternative to GDScript. In fact, it always felt like writing GDScript, just in a less efficient manner than typing.
Announced today on the Godot blog, the feature is being removed:
VisualScript will be removed from the codebase in Godot 4.0 (it will remain supported in Godot’s 3.x branch).
As VisualScript was implemented as an optional module, the relevant code was moved to a dedicated repository so that interested users could still compile it in, if there is interested in keeping it up to date: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-visual-script
One possibility is to convert it to an official GDExtension using GodotCPP, which is very mature now and should support everything required to do this. As an extension, it may work better as a ground for experimentation and improvement. For this to happen, however, there have to be volunteers wanting to make this happen and spend the time required to research a path forward.
The Godot Engine blog post goes into more information on what went wrong with VisualScript and why it is being removed. You can learn more about the removal in the video below.