I think this improved programming vision starts at a higher level language like Clojure/JS/Haskell and builds on that.
To allow the everyday Joe to use simplified programming all the way down to machine code is a harder task. Languages like Haskell try to do it with an advanced compiler that can make enough sense of the high level language to generate efficient machine code.
Of course you'll still lose performance on some things compared to manual assembler but with larger programs advanced compilers often beat writing C/manual assembly.
Honestly the bigger performance problem is not wether you can make a high level language that generates perfect machine code but wether you can get through the politics/economics of JS/Obj-C/Java to distribute it.
To allow the everyday Joe to use simplified programming all the way down to machine code is a harder task. Languages like Haskell try to do it with an advanced compiler that can make enough sense of the high level language to generate efficient machine code.
Of course you'll still lose performance on some things compared to manual assembler but with larger programs advanced compilers often beat writing C/manual assembly.
Honestly the bigger performance problem is not wether you can make a high level language that generates perfect machine code but wether you can get through the politics/economics of JS/Obj-C/Java to distribute it.