When Will Programming Automation Truly Arrive?

My conservative estimate: not within 30 years. That means I should live long enough to see whether this prediction holds up (assuming Zhihu is still around by then, too).

The hardest part of programming automation isn't the programming languages or the automation tools themselves — it's the ideas and intent behind them. Given the current pace of technological progress, we can't make machines spontaneously develop the will to venture into domains humans haven't explored yet. It's precisely this concept of "purposefulness" that prevents programming automation from existing independent of human involvement.