I heard a quote once that said something like, "For the niche of highly reliable systems, programming is nearly indistinguishable from mathematics. Highly reliable systems should not be a niche."
I think that current methods make it equivalent to writing or -- as user psranga says -- more like law, such as in writing an airtight contract. But I think the future is in software construction that is away from languages and syntax towards something much more mathematical.
Unfortunately, the demand for software far outstrips the number of people able to create software mathematically. Additionally, domain applications demand domain knowledge which is even rarer among the mathematical software creators.
For large classes of problems, software should not be written mathematically -- it's not efficient.
I think that current methods make it equivalent to writing or -- as user psranga says -- more like law, such as in writing an airtight contract. But I think the future is in software construction that is away from languages and syntax towards something much more mathematical.