To often, I think we're focused on the writing of code rather than the reading of code. Annotations sometimes seem repetitive, but repetitive can aid the readability.

Type inference might be a very nice compromise. Haskell allows you to annotate with type information, and that may provide more helpful errors, but usually it's optional. But people do it anyway, because type information tells a reader so much about the program.

If we just focus on writing, then clearly the programming language is meant only for unidirectional communication from a human to a computer. But if we focus on reading as well, then it becomes about humans communicating with other humans.