[umtrey]

If we look at the rise of easier and easier to use graphic design programs - Photoshop, Illustrator, and so on - we don't see a decreased relevance of experienced or quality graphic design professionals. Instead, the ability to get something, anything done that looks OK is much easier. The highest quality products are still produced by the highest quality individuals. The tool is an enabling device.

We can mirror this to programming, and IDEs. Visual Studio, for instance, takes a ton of the nitty-gritty details of programming out of the picture for a vast population of people looking to write software. The need for quality and very skilled programmers isn't any less relevant - they're just not needed for every piece of development like they used to be. This is how we're able to get way more software than before. The very skilled programmers are almost more important in order to facilitate more software to get pushed out, as there will require an increased expectation of quality from software and only a limited group who can produce or lead such a development effort.

None of this is a bad thing, but it's just a change in how things used to be done. As it used to be in the automotive world, not everyone has to be a full fledged mechanic to keep the car running - but for the big jobs, there is a definite demand for the higher skill. (Of course, computerization of the automobile is bringing this back around!)

[digamber_kamat]

I agree. Technical challenges are not always deal with issues of processing and memory. In case of web the real problem is scalability and communicating processes and system components. May be we will soon come up with some formalism and technologies that will make scalability a dumb problem but then we will have a new set of technical challenges to be solved. So the demand for highly skilled people who care about their work will only increase with time.

In my opinion it is wrong to assume that a language like Python is better than C. They are all independent of each other. Python is simply useless when it comes to real-time processing where hard deadlines are required, you cant chose anything except Ada or some flavor of C. They each have their strengths and that is why they are still alive.