[jerf]

I'm sure there's improvements around the edges to be made. I'm not sure if there's a massive paradigm shift that can be done.

At least not in terms of current technology; we can all imagine the Star Trek future where you can just tell the computer that you want an analysis of all the currently-interesting factors related to this diplomatic situation and a collection of AIs turn that into something effective. At that point "programmers" aren't staring at large blocks of text. Though don't be fooled; someone is going in deeper than the initial instruction. "Programming" may instead be a matter of working with an AI almost like you'd work with a coworker, but someone's going to be dedicated to the task of maximizing output. You've seen we've recently taken a big step in this direction, but we've still got a number of steps to go, and even this big step is still being processed by the world at large.

But in terms of current tech and the world of programming as we know it (which I actually believe will always be with us; while it has its manifest limitations, the ability to take concrete instructions and chew through them at light speed will always be useful; even if you've got an AI that can use teraflops and petaflops to have a real-time conversation with you, even that AI will have uses for conventional programming techniques to use those teraflops & petaflops just as we'd use them today, rather than for high-level AI functionality), I don't know if there's a huge paradigm shift that can scale to, say, the size of the Linux kernel.

But if anyone wants to create it, I think they need to start from an understanding of the positives of our current paradigm, rather than the false assumption that it's all just some sort of big mistake and it's so obvious what the better answer would have been.