Telescopic text

So look here: telescopictext.com. This is a simple story: "I made tea." Click on highlighted words for more detail. A lot more detail. And yet the overall narrative remains that the author made tea. [More detail at telescopictext.org, including a toolset!]

This is more or less what I'm saying about semantic programming. Looking at the high-level specification for a particular action, we see "Make tea". When we consider that action in more detail, we resolve further specifications that were previously invisible. Like varying f-stops that the eye cannot perceive, the mind elides these vast gulfs of detail in order to make sense of the world.

This process is nearly imperceptible to us. As programmers, we're familiar with it - it's the reason for Hoftstader's Law, if nothing else - but programming languages don't take it into consideration (except insofar as some are higher-level, and of course LISP can be made to do some of this, with its fancy macro system to hide cruft at will).

Maybe "telescopic code"?