> I feel like our programming tools are pretty good for programming in the small, but I suspect we're still waiting for a breakthrough for being able to actually make complex software reliably. (And, no, I don't just mean yet another "framework" or another language that's just C with a fancier type system or novel memory management)

Readability is for human optimization for self or for other people's posterity and code comprehension to the readers mind. We need a new way to visualize/comprehension code that doesn't involve heavy reading and the read's personal capabilities of syntax parsing/comprehension.

This is something we will likely never be able to get right with our current man machine interfaces; keyboard, mouse/touch, video and audio.

Just a thought. As always I reserve the right to be wrong.