Can machines program?

Consider that a language such as Python does not let you easily access the semantics of the developer. One example is the difficulty of retrieving the name of a temporary variable. This appears to be a limitation of the language specification to protect developers and users from errors, performance overhead, security issues, and internal exposure.

However, a natural consequence is that the developer cannot instruct the machine to program. Another example is Java, which more recently, added Reflection as a feature. In addition, template-driven development solutions exist, i.e. "code generators".

1. What is the state-of-the-art of AI that can create programs of their own?

2. Are the limits of common programming language specifications a possible obstacle, such that specific languages or dialects must be applied to create artificial programmers?