Each time I open an article on HN describing the virtues of the latest programming language, I always see the word "powerful". Whether a language is Assembly or Python, the author can guarantee it's "powerful". I think it's devolved into a buzzword because programmers use it to mean opposite things. It's like how Orwell said two critics can describe the same painting as possessing both "a living quality" and "a peculiar deadliness" [1].
Like I said in another comment, programmers were able to abstract binary away from the tangibility of punch tape. But I think we can only abstract so much before we begin to hit a wall, beyond of which we begin to lose absolutely essential features. So once we reach such a point, I think complexity becomes conserved.
So if we want to simplify one thing, the best we can often do is move the complexity elsewhere. Like a what a refrigerator does with heat. When programmers say a low level language like C is simple and powerful, they mean that the implementation is simple, but the interface is complex [2]. But when programmers say that a high level language like Python is simple and powerful, they mean that the implementation is complex, but the interface is simple.
So I think the real question is, "Where is the complexity hiding?"
