Something LISPy with optional typing would probably be about right. But I think the real obstacles are in the ecosystem. There was a hint about "idiosyncracies of Heroku and Twilio". Technology for quickly deploying applications and sending text messages all over the world exists multiple times over. Why does it still take so much effort to integrate them? Why is business logic such a small portion of our codebases, and duct-tape such a large portion? Part of it is plain inadequate industry experience in building high-powered abstractions, but also market forces and network effects.