Is it possible to create software that can create new software by text or speech description?

I think we will eventually have something to intelligently build software, but it won't be just as you describe. Maybe it would for something simple and un-novel, like "Build me a online store with colors that match my company logo". But the main reason I say that it probably won't just be like that is because that's not the way software is built today with humans either. You don't typically describe the desired product verbally to a programmer and then come back 6 months later to a finished product. It's generally an iterative process, just like many other kinds of products are made. You prototype something, test it, get feedback, adjust, do it again and again until your prototypes get better and better to the point where you think it's valuable enough to release. The only time it's not like that is if you're building something that's almost the same as something that was built before. Like analogously, "remember those blue basketball shoes we made last month? Now let's make red ones". So in the future, I do think we'll have software that allows people to automatically build complex software without the need to hire programmers, but I think the using the software builder will be an interactive experience. You won't simply type out a description and be done with it.

I think I totally misread the question at first, I thought you meant, a specialized way to program using just voice command. I started writing that "it's something that could probably be done now if someone really put their, but you'd still have to learn a specialized verbal instruction set..." But then I read it again and I realized it's not what you asked for. You want software that allows you to simply type or speak what you want the software to do and get the program you want. The answer to that is not bloody likely.  (in the near future at least) Programming is the act of creating software by describing it in incredibly specific detail.

Actually, there are already softwares which can create softwares like parsers with just a description. But if you are looking at domain independent softwares, then even a human cannot really write a software given just a problem description. Problem needs to solved first. But, yea I hope that there is some AI program that is able to solve problems a wide variety of problems. However, to the best of my knowledge, this problem is quite far from the kinds of challenges that are being focused on by present research communities.

See my quick and dirty webpages: http://meta-guide.com/naturaljava/ http://meta-guide.com/nlpa-natural-language-program-analysis/ http://meta-guide.com/slp-spoken-language-programming/ http://meta-guide.com/voicecode/

Yes. In fact some programmers use speech dictation to code in Python and C already. Unfortunately this kind of program development would require some fairly complex understanding and processing of language to allow for human languages like English to be used. This probably requires some high level Artificial Intelligence to be effective and may one day be a big part of how we interact with our computers. If you Google 'Natural Language Processing' and 'Automated Problem Solving' you should be able to find more information on the technology that is being researched at the moment.