Lambda the Ultimate

I was curious if there was any sort of consensus for what the most powerful semantics known so far that are still guaranteed to only allow one to write programs that terminate? Phrased another way, languages that are "as close as possible to being Turing complete without actually being Turing complete." Most powerful in this context meaning something like, "the language for which their exists a function mapping all possible programs written in it to equivalent programs in the domain of all-possible-programs-that-could-be-written-in-a-Turing-complete-language with the largest image compared to all other such functions for other languages".

I couldn't find this video anywhere on LtU, although it is a little old, and I'm not up-to-date with what Adobe is working on as of late. In any case, this happens to be a favorite video of mine. It is a clear demonstration of how Computer Science can be put to efffective use with the right understanding. These guys really know what they're doing with this, and happen to be close to many of my thoughts, ideas, beleifs about software development. Consider it food for thought.

A Possible Future of Software Development