[cjblomqvist]

For non standardized features, I doubt it will happen. I'm my experience, it all comes down to the details, and the details need to be expressed in a language without possible interpretation problems. Imo, most programming languages are already on that level, so there won't be any revolution here.

Graphical programming might change how many people work. More standardized modules (blogging, authentication, e-commerce, etc) might gradually save us more and more time. But what differentiates will always be needed to be expressed in some way.

Sure, we could go towards SQL-like ways of expressing the desired result instead of how the program should process things, but honestly I think in many scenarios ifs and such statements will be much easier to express yourself in for a long time (ever?).

[hderms]

It's possible that we could be replaced but it's hard to envision it would happen without a general AI.

Developments that are sophisticated, but fall short from truly replacing engineers, wouldn't have the predicted effect. Let's say a 20% improvement in the time it takes to produce software. Would anyone feel strongly, at this point, that this that would result in 20% of engineers being out of a job, or is it more likely we'd just produce 20% more software?