Language is magic

In an interview on the Evolution of (Computer) Languages, Bjarne Stroustrup states,

"Any language that can express all that is needed for a wide range of application areas could be considered unnecessarily complex for any given application, but it must cope with an essentially unbounded set of applications."

I was immediately struck by the similarity to Arthur C. Clarke's axiom:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke's is the superset, but Stroustrup explains why it is difficult to figure out entirely how language works.