Imagine taking up a hobby of drawing, then bemoaning the existence of a printer. Or learning spanish, and bemoaning google translate. Or trying out woodworking, and bemoaning IKEA.
I don't think painting and photography (Which was when painters perhaps feared for their jobs at first) are equivalent. If I paint, it's not because I want an exact "photo" of a person or scene. The fact that its painted by hand makes it fundamentally different from a photograph. With software, you can't really see that. It's compiled and you just see the end result.