We did read the manifesto and I'm fairly convinced that Harel's vision of interactive specification and refinement is the the long-term future of software. I'm not sure how to get there though, short of general AI. Eve aims to reduce the amount of specification required and can make sensible guesses about implementation, but it is not able to 'fill in the blanks' for partial specifications and we won't be focusing on that any time soon.
Thinking of programming as a dialogue with the computer is a really strong metaphor that I gladly recognize as something that inspired you [1][2].
Short: You provide the goals and the constraints, then through a back and forth dialogue with the computer you describe and clarify the problem (and also your understanding). You keep on negotiating and providing more constraints until it simply finds a possible solution (the problem domain is now computable) or the best fitting solution now satisfies your needs (in time).
The hardest parts are probably:
1. Collecting, developing the constraint solvers. Should we imagine that collection more as platform of user contributed (programmed/trained) packages?
2. Developing the dialouge that is not just textual but visual (in both ways) (notepad vs IDE vs Theater(?!) don't forget macros/acting out!)). Showing is always faster then writing and gives one better cues on the closures/framework of the actual discussion.
