> All of these new features are impossible in the visual programming paradigm.

I believe that to be not true. Visual paradigm allows for some interesting behaviours.

1. Integrate external tooling and workflows

This is just the result of the Scratch runtime being in the browser.

2. Macros

Okay, macros might seem very difficult in a visual paradigm, but its possible. And, in a visual paradigm, it would be very easy to visualize how macros transform the code. (You could have a pop-up that shows the expanded form of the macro)

3. Optimizations: Turbowarp is a Scratch mod that does JIT compilation with optimizations.