Why are people still debating syntax when programming by example is clearly the future? Why don't more people talk about this?
In your opinion, why is it clearly the future?
From the abstract of a paper about this topic [0]: "Programming by Examples (PBE) has the potential to revolutionize enduser programming by enabling end users, most of whom are non-programmers, to create scripts for automating repetitive tasks. "
Most of the professional programming I've done has been solving (relatively) unique problems, not automating repetitive tasks. While automating repetitive tasks is a great use-case for programming, I don't think that's enough to call it the future of all programming.
[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
1. It sounds like, to implement a robust program (and not just a pattern in Excel), you'd need to provide every different combination of input/output. This is just not feasible for any remotely large project. For example, if you need the program to handle an obscure error in a specific way, then you'd have to provide the series of inputs that causes the error.
2. If programming by example is characterized by giving inputs and outputs, then isn't it basically just supervised machine learning? In which case, we're still many years away from not needing to write the actual ML code ourselves in a standard programming language.