Coming from Copernicus, Substance Designer needs to do big stuff to catch up.

I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but after playing with Houdini’s Copernicus for a while I’ve come to the realization that Substance Designer is starting to feel obsolete and is seriously falling behind. 
I’ve used this software since the Allegorithmic days, I never liked it to be honest, but given the fact that this program won a special place in the industry I’m somehow forced to use it quite often, also studios would rather pay a Designer license than Houdini’s so then again, I’m basically forced to use this software all day. 

Not gonna lie this is most likely a rant, but I want to know if there are people out there that share my frustrations with this program:

• Please for the love god! Implement a code based system: One of the things that I seriously dislike about designer is that everything is node based. Designer is now a technical tool and is something that most artists avoid, they would rather use Painter instead. Some of you may say “Well you have Python!” NO! I’m talking about replacing the function graphs, those you use in Pixel/Value Processors. In Houdini you have pretty much 3 programming languages that give you huge power, OpenCL being the most powerful and you also have Python, I wouldn’t mind using Python instead of node based systems but I’m pretty sure there are people out there that are more lean towards code. I genuinely find it ridiculous that this guy (Impressive work btw) implemented a GLSL system using Python to write Shaders in Designer, this is something that should be officially supported! So is not really about completely removing function graphs, but I would absolutely love to have a Python node or GLSL node with a decent text editor that would allow me to write custom code instead of relying on nodes, I have made complex stuff in the pixel processor and is really painful. 
• I want to be able to link parameters between nodes: One of the most useful features of Houdini is to be able to link parameters between each other and between nodes, in Designer this is technically possible but the process is quite tedious compared to Houdini whereas it only takes two clicks to link parameters. Linking parameters and values makes proceduralism much easier. 
• Why can’t I cast strings to numerical values? So I was making some tools and I had the idea to be able to enable debug information about these tools/nodes to the artists because it is indeed quite useful, the idea was simple, use a text node and add a function to the parameter and convert numerical values to strings, until I found out this is not possible. With all due respect, this is ridiculous! Every single piece of software out there deals with data type conversion/casting, why can’t this be done here? I had to implement old shader tricks to display numerical values as text and it was very painful. This could also be avoided too if we had proper code based systems integrated.
• The Python API needs serious improvements: Python is great and all but I genuinely feel that the Python API was left behind, I find it annoying that I can’t access to the 3D viewport and automate stuff, I also can’t modify or add extensions to the 3D and 2D viewport, why? I mean, according to the documentation there are no functions/methods or even classes to access these viewports, I could be wrong here.
• We need better interaction between textures/materials and 3D Models: The biggest advantage of Houdini is that you can work with 3D models and textures interactively at any given time and is possible to transfer information from 3D models to textures/materials quite easy and fast (real time) in Designer from what I recall this is not possible, and the interaction between model graphs and material graphs is quite limited in comparison.
  Why can’t we directly integrate our model graphs into material graphs like Houdini does? I would like to extract Height, Normal, AO information right away and use them in my material or whatever I’m working on. 
  What if we could use splines in the model graph and use them there instead of relying on the 2D Spline system which can be quite slow sometimes? Houdini can integrate splines in real time into their texturing system. 
  The new SDF Modeling tools while interesting and useful for some situations they are really complicated to execute, in some cases I would 100% rather switch to a 3D Modeling software and import my 3D Model than doing it manually with the SDFs using node based systems which leads me again to the first point, not everything has to be node based for the love of god. 
• Animation / VFX Support: I think this has been requested countless times. Designer needs a huge improvement on animation, it has remained as a static texturing tool since its conception, we need timelines and ways to work with animations specially for shaders and VFX development.