Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same thought, if he had a solution then he should have it by now.
His critical error is evident in his comparative analysis that places Physics and Programming on the same level. The systems that underly natural sciences are givens . The entire kettle of soup of software complexity boils on the fact that software engineering must first create the 'terra firma' of computing. That is the root cause of the complexity in software: it lacks a physics.
He tackles your question during the Q&A. He (and his PhD student, Dan) talk about how so much of the effort to create 'terra firma', as you call it, is caused by the terrible hardware sold to us by Intel. He argues that much of the hardware we have is just software that's been crystallized too early. If he had a machine more like an FPGA he could build all of these abstractions in powerful DSLs right down to the metal.