[nullpunkt]

The problem with code...is that there is such a big overhead between thinking/designing a solution and actually implementing it in code - as in unneeded trouble with coding, syntax, compilation, errors....and so on, and so on - as such, coding and source code per se are widely perceived as Work Produced, not easily sharable for Free.

Code, globally, needs to be abstracted, to the point that it can be far more damn simple to Write something and Execute it without the troubles of having to know libraries, syntax, language intricacies, and so on and so forth. There is such an absurd obsession with Coding in its current state that it makes it even harder to Change how code is written, to make it easier per se, to Abstract it even more whilst retaining flexibility and power - the less symbols the better, the less actual letters in code the better, the more grouping of code the better, the more Actual reuse of it the better.

Take Java, for example. It is widely the most popular complete Abomination of the computer science world. It's just obscenely hideous - having to write so many letters and words and syntax only to fill a flawed theory and logic behind it, it's just -Inefficient-.

Abstracting the way Code is and is written will be an actual evolution of computer science as a whole - reuse of code, ease of writing, easier sharing, less headaches, better products, more Meaningful time spent on code. Making people 'love' the current way of writing it just to turn them into code monkeys one day is just horrible and exploitative.

[castle-bravo]

Programming is hard, but progress is being made. For example: I think Haskell is an order of magnitude easier to write than C++. It seems to me that programming languages are evolving to give programmers access to ever higher levels of abstraction.

The holy grail, I think, would be a kind of unification of programming language and mathematical notation, the kind of language in which the models of the Prime Radiant (fom Isaac Asimov's Foundation series) would be expressed. So far, I haven't seen a language that comes close to this ideal, but I think there are lots of people who have a similar vision and have tried to approach it in various ways. Haskell is capable of posessing some small fraction of the terseness and beauty of mathematical expressions, Gerald J Sussman's work in Scheme captures symbolic mathematics and physics beautifully and succinctly, and Stephen Wolfram has elegantly organized an incredible volume of mathematical knowlege in his Mathematica package.

I don't think we can completely eliminate the impedance mismatch between human creativity and computation, but certainly we're working on narrowing that chasm. I can't offer you any suggestions, but if you feel very passionate about it, there may be a project (possibly a thesis project) out there that you could get involved in.