It has nothing in common with Max nor Pd. The latter specifiy signal flow and operators on the signal. Nodal instead represents events and time distances between them; this way you can design musical patterns; time is two dimensional, so you can draw loops; then you can associate musical information with the events and add logical operations so that your loops vary in time. It's a very nice experimenting and composition tool, especially if you don't play an instrument. See e.g. here for a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQpJi0AkFBQ.
With some persuasion, Max can do everything Nodal does. It's not convenient and you have to use numbers instead of line lengths. But it's untrue they have "nothing in common."
That's the whole point of Nodal; you represent musical patterns (and control flow) with graphical means. Entering numbers is close to Midi event lists and has little to do with Nodal's approach. Max/Pd are great tools, but focus on the processing and signal flow aspect (i.e. the machine which generates the music/noise), not the representation of the music.
