The main trouble lies in the limitations of the tools we use.

If there would be a tool, which understands our minds ("I want that light flashing if this pin is grounded", but also "This function might get called from and interrupt so make it in a safe way, avoiding any trouble")... What we started with was a very low level approach, zeros and ones, grouped eventually into (hexadecimal) numbers. Then we had assemblers, and later compilers. But it appears to me, that nothing qualitatively new appeared since then...

I once thought about an "autogenerated" (or "learning") compiler. You'd write down your ideas in whatever form you want. The compiler would start reading in the input and ask you questions. Eventually, it would give you options, and maybe also some test-run of questionable sequences. And, it would learn from your answers, what and how to do, so the next time you want to do something similar it would ask you, in a conversational tone, "do you want to do something similar than the last time"?...

Jan Waclawek