I doubt that software will look anything remotely like what we have now, so I don't think I can agree about all of the layers of abstraction. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that software will be described by high-level specifications and compiled to running code subject to a separable executable specification (defining things like resource limits, allocation behaviours, latency requirements, etc).
Superoptimizers and machine learning will be used to ensure the final code conforms to all required specifications, so people generally won't be dealing with lots of abstraction layers in the way they do now.
> Superoptimizers and machine learning will be used to ensure the final code conforms to all required specifications, so people generally won't be dealing with lots of abstraction layers in the way they do now.
Have you seen the current state of model driven architecture and the state of trying to do metaprogramming of any sort?
The latter is very stack specific and is really hard to get right, whereas the former has never made its way out of academia. Admittedly, even the people who were forced to use something like the Eclipse Modeling Project ( http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/ ) won't deny that there is definitely potential there, but to a large degree it has failed to materialize.
If there was as much hype around code generation as there was around the new releases of React, then maybe things would be different, but at large i personally doubt that the industry wants to take a step back and spend a decade on the building blocks, rather than getting things done in their day to day lives. Perhaps i'm really skeptical.
> Have you seen the current state of model driven architecture and the state of trying to do metaprogramming of any sort?
Sure, but you described circumstances "centuries from now". Your objection about not taking a step back for a decade or two due to immaturity evaporates on that timeline.
Superoptimizers and machine learning will be used to ensure the final code conforms to all required specifications, so people generally won't be dealing with lots of abstraction layers in the way they do now.