I agree that it's impossible to predict the future. There may be some discontinuity that we haven't foreseen. That said, it hasn't happened yet. I think the ru

I agree that it's impossible to predict the future. There may be some discontinuity that we haven't foreseen. That said, it hasn't happened yet. I think the run of the mill work will get more commoditized. Building web sites is already pretty cheap. Programmers in Europe make a fraction of what their counterparts in the US make. But the fact remains, programming is still more of an art than a science, despite all the effort that has gone into making it a repeatable technical discipline. As smcquaid said, software is hard. Many new products require invention on the spot, albeit using more well understood techniques as the years go on. But as the scope of techniques continues to expand, so does the problem space within which they must be applied. Software is being used to streamline more and more of our world. As much as we try to make it repeatable, it is still an art. Agile has gone a long way towards this goal, which is one reason we see run of the mill work being commoditized. Many people are certified in Scrum. But that will never completely solve the problem. As long as there are new challenges to be solved, those who do it well will be compensated accordingly. There's a reason good doctors and lawyers still make a good living, centuries into the advent of their professions.