I agree with you. I also like to think that we have replaced, several times over, the original "programmers" with smarter and smarter silicon and the result is

I agree with you. I also like to think that we have replaced, several times over, the original "programmers" with smarter and smarter silicon and the result is not fewer programmers, but orders of magnitude more. I think this will happen with other professions. Things which once required years of education and (often physical) practice, say delivering certain kinds of healthcare, will become heavily computer and robot assisted and we'll see some of them pushed from the expensive limited availability hospital to the much more widely available pharmacy -- or even to the shopping mall.