With an ever-increasing number of connected devices (e.g., IoT), cloud computing faces efficiency challenges due to complex infrastructure, high communication costs, and privacy. Fog and edge computing enable computing closer to data sources, offering alternatives to the limitations of relying exclusively on the cloud. When combined with high-performance cloud platforms, fog, and edge devices form a computing continuum. However, the continuum challenges designers who need to compile and deploy on distributed and heterogeneous devices and optimize for a diverse set of nonfunctional requirements. To ease the usage and ensure the full potential of the continuum, a Design and Programming Environment (DPE) that is interoperable, reusable, portable, and cross-layer is needed. In this context, the Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR) becomes vital since it provides an extensible and reusable compiler infrastructure. The project development of a continuum-oriented DPE leveraging the MLIR infrastructure is discussed in this paper as a work in progress.