hope it matches the hype

It changes the economics of building applications, because what used to take hours or days or weeks to do, can now take minutes. Currently, Wolfram meets many people who have an interesting idea or algorithm or application, but can’t complete it for lack of time or a team of developers or money. That could all change.

“It will spawn a whole mass of new startups,” Wolfram told me. “Now it becomes realistic for someone to build out a complete algorithm and automation system in a few hours.”

It also changes who can program, because instead of programs being tens of thousands of lines of code, they’re 20 or 200. And that means kids can code or novice programmers can get started — and build significant apps.

I admire the goal but I'm skeptical that interesting programs can be developed this way.