I'm placing my bet that there will always be people who are interested in systems programming. They're the Night Watch (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/peop

I'm placing my bet that there will always be people who are interested in systems programming. They're the Night Watch (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightwatch.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightw...) There will always be people who after years of doing high level stuff, get curious about the low level implementations, start asking questions about how data is represented in the machines, and then get sucked in and they stay there. I'm personally not too worried about the fact that there are fewer systems programmers, because those who do it in the future, are those who are interested in it. That will ensure higher quality software in general.