Maybe you're missing the fact that in 2015 we have super computers (by 80s standards) in our pockets which are always connected to the Internet to which we act

Maybe you're missing the fact that in 2015 we have super computers (by 80s standards) in our pockets which are always connected to the Internet to which we actually issue verbal commands.. In fact, most of the tasks described in those futuristic books didn't involve programming, I suspect they were examples of how you could ask your HAL 9000 to tell you how much is 9999 * 9999 and it would give you the answer in human voice. A lot of the tasks which would have required programming in the 80s are now solved by one of the millions of apps, so that's another angle. Maybe we're not exactly were sci-fi predicted we'd be at, but there are a lot of things that sci-fi didn't even dream of that we take for granted. Even the dev environments of today. You'd think they only include the text editor/IDE, but you've also got the browser, google and stackoverflow, github and a myriad of tools and libraries to help use build more and more complex apps. The fact is, today's programmer-for-hire is an interface between the client (app inventor/architect) and the machine, just like secretaries were interfaces between their boss' spoken messages and the typewritten letters. And if something can be optimized away by technology someday it will. Maybe it won't involve spoken language (although, why not, if it's done right?), but my bet is that programming will be less of a profession and more of a skill that you learn by using powerful tools.