[mkmk3]

>> I think we're getting close to strong AI there though, so I don't see it happening any time soon.

It's unclear which clause is meant to be negative or positive here. If we're close to strong AI, systems which ask clarifying questions would be close as well, no?

[flir]

Sorry. To be clear: I think strong AI is "fifty years away" and has been for seventy five years.

So yeah, an expert system that can read a natural language description of a feature and ask questions until it has enough detail to generate the code is science fiction in my opinion.

Having said that, maybe it could be achieved in a limited domain, SHRDLU-style. But that's just a way to deal with the ambiguity by excising it.