patoline VS ktikz

Patoline

There is https://patoline.github.io/ but it's been in alpha / active development for years now.

I agree that TeX's errors is one of the worst things about it. Strongly suggest you track your changes in git, I found it was often easier to go back to some version that compiled and re-add the changes, rather than try and track down the missing bracket or extra backslash that broke it.

But try to consider "dirtying your hands with code", maybe LaTeX is not the appropriate tool, but something newer like SILE, Patoline or similar technology may be good for you. Yes, you already said you want something drag and drop, but this other approach.

there was a project but it seems abandoned

https://github.com/patoline/patoline

There's also KTikZ and its Qt version QTikZ.

(Here is the package https://github.com/fhackenberger/ktikz).

Having something like ktikz (or qtikz) helps:

https://github.com/fhackenberger/ktikz

However, it is not quite as helpful as latexdraw was for pstricks.

That said, I am not sure how much of that difficulty is due to tools lacking and how much is due to "describe vector graphics as code" being a hard problem.