Exactly, the fundamentally hard bit of software development is the specification part. As developers we translate between what the customer appears to want and

Exactly, the fundamentally hard bit of software development is the specification part. As developers we translate between what the customer appears to want and what the compiler requires. If the customer had specified what they want with perfect clarity we would be able to automatically generate code from those requirements (or even compile them directly). But because they haven't been completely clear we have to use judgement and inference.