Yes, I work with PLC's for a job... but there is nothing more comfy than a graphical programming language when you are dealing with real world I/O.
Have you ever had a play? You can now get Codesys for the Rpi and the BBB which is a very low barrier to entry.
Ever played or experimented?
I guess you are all text monkeys here
Ladder, no users ever?
I tried. TRIED. To understand shitty LabView spaghetti code for a week.
LabView is in 99% of the cases it's used the wrong tool. And in the 1% it is the right tool, you could still use anything else.
String concatenation to build SQL queries? check
Stringly typed data arrays? check
Massive manipulation of said string arrays? check
100+ modules with badly defined and separated interfaces thanks to strignly typing... check.