I think the problem is really that nobody is being taught in school to constantly redefine their language to create an ideal representation of the problem, when

I think the problem is really that nobody is being taught in school to constantly redefine their language to create an ideal representation of the problem, when that's what "ideal" code tends to involve. The comfort zone is what you know, and if what you know is Java... However, I also think that we are making progress to go in the abstract direction, by dint of increasingly having polyglot systems and DSLs that are part of the standard libraries(e.g. regex and SQL access are expected everywhere now). If this trend accelerates we could have a hockey stick effect and before we know it, find ourselves programming almost entirely with tiny languages.