>We have managed to be largely blind to this because the amount of work that's available to programmers has expanded hugely to compensate for increased producti

>We have managed to be largely blind to this because the amount of work that's available to programmers has expanded hugely to compensate for increased productivity The increased complexity allowed by increasing levels of abstraction is a huge part of that increase in demand. When we move up the abstraction chain we can generally build more complex systems. People then come up with new ways to use the increased capabilities to solve new problems. I don't think this is going to stop unless we develop strong AI.