I don't think it takes very much complexity before this kind of situation arises (perhaps my example was a little contrived!), maybe it would be clearer to appl

I don't think it takes very much complexity before this kind of situation arises (perhaps my example was a little contrived!), maybe it would be clearer to apply this to debugging where it certainly becomes very quickly apparent even with extremely simple code. I don't think what you claim as ideal is possible - the only thing a programming environment can hope to offer is to eliminate as much accidental complexity as possible, leaving you to focus on essential complexity. The real-world problems we try to solve as developers are usually at least somewhat hard (even the seemingly simple ones), no getting away from that. In no way intending to be condescending, I seriously recommend you read 'No Silver Bullet' by Fred Brooks if you haven't already - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet - an absolute classic (and important too I think).