Why we have used notations and why they are not necessary anymore

In this great article, I've read recently, is a very interesting belief: "We believe that next-generation programming systems will most likely store source code as XML, rather than as flat text. Programmers will not see or edit XML tags; instead, their editors will render these models to create human-friendly views, just like Web browsers and other WYSIWYG editors."
This is certainly true. As soon as I read the sentence above, it was clear why we have used notations in programming. Do you also ask, why there were invented such rules as Hungarian notation, indentation, firstLetterOfEveryMethodNameInCapitals, CONSTANT_NAMES_UPPER_CASED, etc? Here is the answer - we didn't have the right tools those days. We were lack of expressiveness and all the notations were merely poor escapes from that mud. Now, when any programmer may express his/her ideas in the proper way, these notations are not as important as they were before. I'm not saying, stop using them, but in case you do, it's much easier to refactor all the pile you wrote now than it has ever been before.