Programming breakthroughs we need

This is something Rails gets very right. Bundler and Rake make Rails one of the nicest development environments there is.

But we can and should do better. Why is DLL-hell still a thing? Imports should specify versions, defaulting to a default if none is specified. Languages barely even consider versions today, they are almost always hacked on via magic text strings in filenames.

Why do tools like Dependabot and Renovate need to parse a million dependency formats to figure out versions? The language runtime or build system should produce that as a first class output.

Deployment and documentation are other places most languages ignore and delegate to a variety of crappy external tools.

Build Server Protocol is a good step in the right direction, but it barely scratches the surface. It would be great to see a language that prioritizes the parts of the developer experience that aren't writing code.

1. Writing glue code and boilerplate is a waste / Why not use a framework?

The author complains about boilerplate just to circularly complain about frameworks hiding "important details you care about". This, to me, denotes a failure to recognize some pretty basic trade-offs of any kind of development: you either create your own axioms and start something new or base your work on previous art by others. The more you want to customize, the less prior art you can use. He seems to want to "eat the cake and have it too".

2. Editing code in general doesn't work well / Program is not a text / Program is a model / Do we need a language?

This section makes no sense to me. Everything is a language, whatever format he desires to abstract away all formats will need a language to be coded into. Language is a tool to convey meaning and achieve communication, it does not matter if it's text, pictures, sounds, whatever. It just so happens that written language is the single most ubiquitous communication method ever developed by humanity, and the formalization of syntax and semantics are there to reduce the ambiguity which is natural to natural language. The author seams to believe that we should achieve a single natural language that conveys meaning without ambiguity, or that some other form of communication can better represent the programmer intention than text. I would love to understand exactly how, because to me it seems like a pointless argument in the way it's presented.

3. Testing/Correctness / I want simpler testing

Again, the author does not seem to understand WHY testing is difficult. To me, it's very obvious that testing is hard simply because 1. proving a complex system is hard and often impossible as we all learn in CS101 and 2. Testing itself requires conveying the meaning of the requirement correctly, and as with all communication there are always failures in this process. Once more the author seems to want a magic wand, ignore the trade-offs and, I don't know, fix all communication problems ever to have existed through human existence?

4. What is the vision?

Finally, the author tries to force upon the reader an argument that everyone's perspective is wrong, that some sort of revolution is required - and possible - to make all these desires come true. I think this misses the point by such a long shot, like the good old Product Manager that "just wants things to be done and doesn't care how". I may be the one incapable of changing my perspective and thinking outside the box, but I have a feeling that if such a revolution was possible - and most importantly - unanimous - we'd had some glimpse of it already.

Note how every single argument of the author is - to my interpretation - fundamentally tied to a communication problem. All the issues mentioned converge on difficulty to encode a message in such a way that it is interpreted correctly by the receiver, be it a machine or a person, in a unambiguous way. This problem is so much bigger than programming, so much bigger than engineering, so much bigger than Science. I'd argue that this is THE fundamental open problem of humanity, and believing that there is some sort of final solution is extremely naive.