Program synthesis seems like the most promising area of research for that—treat compilation as a search problem or even a series of search problems rather than

Program synthesis seems like the most promising area of research for that—treat compilation as a search problem or even a series of search problems rather than as a pipeline of (mostly) deterministic steps. Couple a compiler with search-based optimization, some kind of lightweight verification and a more interactive interface with the programmer and you have a programming environment that can aggressively use today's powerful compute resources to provide a qualitatively different experience.