The problem is, the feature is never actually "users should be able to select multiple receipts". It's "users should be able to select multiple receipts, but not receipts for which they only have read access and not write access, and not when editing a receipt, and should persist when navigating between the paginated data but not persist if the user goes to a different 'page' within the webapp. The selection should be a thick border around the receipt, using the webapp selection color and the selection border thickness, except when using the low-bandwidth interface, in which case it should be a checkbox on the left (or on the right if the user is using a RTL language). Selection should adhere to standard semantics: shift selects all items from the last selection, ctrl/cmd toggles selection of that item, and clicking creates a new, one-receipt selection. ..." By the time you get all that, it's clearer in code.
I will observe that there have been at least three natural-language attempts in the past, none of which succeeded in being "just write it down". COBOL is just as code-y as any other programming language. SQL is similar, although I know a fair amount of non-programmers who can write SQL (but then, back in the day my Mom taught be about autoexec.bat, and she could care less about programming). Anyway, SQL is definitely not just adding phrases and it just works. Finally, Donald Knuth's WEB is a mixture, more like a software blog entry, where you put the pieces of the software inamongst the explanatory writeup. It has caught on even less, unless you count software blogs.