Coding is a valuable skill because computers can do certain tasks far more efficiently than humans can, and in ways that add massive value to our lives. Every e

Coding is a valuable skill because computers can do certain tasks far more efficiently than humans can, and in ways that add massive value to our lives. Every engineering industry I know has been transformed by tools created by programmers. Whether you are solving matrices or simulating aerodynamics, the cost of doing certain tasks and prototyping has reduced to almost zero thanks to computers. And, as far as we can currently tell, there's a massive amount of untapped potential. Whether your programming trading engines or social media, the right program, even a small program, has massive transforming power. Even more significant, if a programmer writes a piece of code that makes a 0.01% improvement to a product, it's virtually free to distribute that improvement to hundreds of millions of people . A programmer may not even need to be very good to add millions of dollars of value to a company if they are put in the right position. As time goes forward, we are seeing substantial developments to the coding practice. Languages are getting better, compilers are getting better, theory is getting better, test suites are getting better. All of this results in programmers being that much more useful when put in the right situation. Iterating on programs is also very cheap. Rather than needing to build an entire new plane engine, you just recompile your code and throw it at the test suite again. Will it stop? Probably not in the next few decades. As simulations and other tools get better, we may see other engineering industries catching up, but right now programming is unique in how accessible it is, how quickly you can iterate on a design, and how easily you can distribute improvements/products to millions and even billions of people. Even if the supply of programmers expands dramatically, I can't imagine running out of things to throw them at. There's always another feature, or another product idea, or some other project that would take a substantial amount of programming resources to complete. High salary programmers are here to stay. I don't know where the ceiling is, but as the tools continue to improve, so will the justification of the salary. Even if we are in a bubble right now, the bubble bursting will still leave programmers in a very comfortable position.