Now compare your description to the program’s source code. The source code is almost certainly several times longer, less intuitive, and less descriptive. I tr

Now compare your description to the program’s source code. The source code is almost certainly several times longer, less intuitive, and less descriptive. I tried this with a short Lisp program a few years ago and found it to be false. I may have been too detailed in my descriptions with the English version, but I don't think so. Evolved[0] languages for human communication are notoriously imprecise. The "plain English" translation of a legal document will be much shorter than the original as well. Such language isn't used in legal documents because lawyers can and will argue over the interpretation. To make programming like everyday English, the runtime would have to sort out the ambiguities. I think that would require human-like AI. Given human-like AI, much of what we do as programmers could be done by the AI instead. A non-programmer could simply ask the AI to create the program or provide certain kinds of output. Even in a situation like that, I suspect there would still be a demand for human programmers who could more precisely communicate their intentions to computers, if only for the purpose of creating better AIs[1]. [0]That means pretty much any language people actually speak. I'm not sure if it's true for designed languages like Esperanto. [1]It might be a good idea to restrict AIs from certain kinds of self-modification or from creating new AIs. I think we've all seen that movie.