The fact that he holds hardware design up as some sort of perfect ideal makes me suspicious. The fact that he's advocating a visual programming language makes m

The fact that he holds hardware design up as some sort of perfect ideal makes me suspicious. The fact that he's advocating a visual programming language makes me more suspicious. Not only is typing much faster than clicking and dragging, but you can't search. Even worse is his hatred for the phrase "no silver bullet". When people say that, they aren't saying that writing good software is impossible, they're saying that there is no substitute for working hard and paying attention to what you're doing, that mechanically copying strategies, processes, tools, etc., is not a panacea. "But he acknowledges that, he's saying that it restricts the scope of improvements to evolutionary ones." No he's not, he's misunderstanding the problem. The problem isn't how to make reliable software, it's how to best understand a problem and describe a solution. That is going to be hard and error prone forever, just go ask a hardware designer.