One way to think about this: Simon was right. There are very few people today programming computers at the level at which Simon programmed them in 1961. After a

One way to think about this: Simon was right. There are very few people today programming computers at the level at which Simon programmed them in 1961. After all, FORTRAN was an automatic coding system because of its super high level of abstraction! In this sense -- when Simon's words are taken in their accurate historical context -- Simon was spot-on about self-programming (aka compilers for high level languages mostly replacing hoardes of assembly wranglers). It's just that now the word "self-programming" means something different because we've used all that automation to build ever more complex systems. And that process will continue. Level of abstraction is increased, we figure out how to automate at that level, and then we raise the bar again to tackle ever more challenging problems.