RobertBlair

You don't get it Nick - that lump of sand doesn't understand your code at all.

It only understands the machine code emitted by the run-time engine (assuming Java/Python etc here).

The language you write in has been developed, at enormous expense, to allow you to express your logic, in a way that you, a human, can understand.

If it were not necessary for you (or other developers) to understand the code, then high level languages would not be needed.

In short, you have got it exactly barse-ackwards: the programming language you use is for humans - and only for humans.

The only reason it is apparently "hard" has nothing to do with computers, and everything to with the inescapable fact that correct, consistent and reproducible logic patterns are hard.

I respect Donald Knuth very highly, but in that literate programming thing he is wrong - it is the code itself that must be clear and readable. Accuracy comes second, efficiency is third and 'elegance' is dead last. IMHO.