My vision of the future for programming is a room with 3d virtual reality goggles. Monitors are nowhere to be found, lines of code in files are presented to you on virtual monitors around you in a 760 degree panoramic view, above, below, and THROUGH. Our brains are evolved for a 3d world, not the lines-of-code on printed page world.
Commands like "instantiate new object", "add items to object", "do an sql query", "run sql query", "sum the integers", suck. These commands will be represented in 3d space like a flow chart with general directives. When you want to "zoom in" on one of the boxes, you can see the particulars of how it takes place. Zooming out shows you a perfect representation of the general directives, zooming in takes you to the nitty gritty commands, and zooming in further shows you the bits being shifted around on the hardware.
that's actually not that far from what programming with well-designed libraries and abstractions is like now. at least, I know I have a more-or-less 3d visualization of my program in my head as I'm working on it... but that could be just me.
Commands like "instantiate new object", "add items to object", "do an sql query", "run sql query", "sum the integers", suck. These commands will be represented in 3d space like a flow chart with general directives. When you want to "zoom in" on one of the boxes, you can see the particulars of how it takes place. Zooming out shows you a perfect representation of the general directives, zooming in takes you to the nitty gritty commands, and zooming in further shows you the bits being shifted around on the hardware.