I don't really think it's a continuum. There is a continuum of abstraction among programming languages, from machine code to Java/Python/Haskell or whatever, but natural language is fundamentally different: it's ambiguous, ill-defined. Even if LLMs generate a lot of our code in the future, somebody is going to have to understand it, verify its correctness, and maintain it.

Natural language, python, c, assembly

The distance isn’t the same between them, but each one is more abstracted than the next.

Natural language can be ambiguous and ill defined. Because the compiler is smarter. Just like you don’t have to manage memory in Python, except it abstracts a lot more.

The fact is that this very instant you can compile from natural language.

There is a vast gulf between natural language and the other 3, which are fundamentally very similar to each other.

LLMs can generate code, but they still need to be prompted correctly, which requires someone who knows how to program beyond toy examples, since the code is going to have to be tested and integrated into running code. The person will need to understand what kind of code they're trying to generate, and whether that meets the business requirements.

Python is closer to C (third generation programming language). Excel is a higher level example. It still takes someone who knows how to use Excel to do anything meaningful.