Abstraction will be the answer. We will need very, very high level domain specific "programming languages".
Problem is: I feel like we are abstracting software slower than computers are getting faster. Is Javascript really that much more abstract than machine code (assembly)? I think not. In the long run, what we do now are baby steps.
We are still telling computers exactly what to do. Every step needs to be spelled out. And we're doing it by text files...
Think about the huge amount of computing power currently used to run gmail on millions of web browsers, servers, and apps. It could be viewed as one big computer program that just happens to run different parts on different devices. The benefit of separating it into parts is that it gives the program close proximity to different data. A massively parallel system would have to divide data into chunks that are separated by latency and bandwidth limitations in a similar way. The language abstractions are less important than the unavoidable physical limitations. Surely the event driven approach of Javascript is a good solution to this latency problem?
While domain specific languages are important , i believe most abstraction today happens at the library/tool level. Yes, some of them use text files and exact instruction, but are still high level.
And with machine learning , we don't even spell every step.
Problem is: I feel like we are abstracting software slower than computers are getting faster. Is Javascript really that much more abstract than machine code (assembly)? I think not. In the long run, what we do now are baby steps.
We are still telling computers exactly what to do. Every step needs to be spelled out. And we're doing it by text files...