[maemre]

I think they will and the paper is too naive when assuming the techniques can scale and that computers can do the translation from a vague list of requirements to a precise specification. This comic[1] explains the issue well I think. There is a lot of hot new research going on in program synthesis, most of the stuff I see is about either of:

- Programming by example where we give some example inputs and outputs and let the machine synthesize a program generalizing the input-output function. It works well for small, pure mathematical functions with not so many subtle edge cases but I don't think we can make it work for the edge cases as easily, at least without human intervention that will be analogous to programming the synthesizer.

- Synthesis from specification, we give a tight spec of the function we want and all the available functions then ask the computer to synthesize the program. Some researchers made some very cool examples of this work by e.g. taking specifications encoded with dependent types and generating conforming programs. The catch here is that, if the spec is not precise enough, you may end up with a non-conforming function and who is going to write such a precise spec? The programmer!

[1]: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensiv...?