[cloakandswagger]

>Do you not want the curious to have ready access to dig in and understand the stuff they use every day?

Yeah, pretty much.

Combine offshoring with the baffling obsession some programmers have with teaching EVERYONE their trade and you can expect compensation levels to plummet in the coming years.

[groby_b]

Right. Let's keep the rest of the world illiterate, as long as we keep making nice salaries.

The "baffling" obsession might come from the fact that many programmers realize that basic programming knowledge is the coming equivalent of literacy. And that they'd never be in the position they're in now if generations of CS people hadn't freely shared what they learned.

[Crisco]

There will still be a need for dedicated computer programmers, but I think that if everyone had basic scripting knowledge or at least was not afraid of gaining that knowledge, the world would be a better place for it. And if more people understood what it took to program, there might be less under or overestimating of the value of a good programmer.

[cloakandswagger]

That's the optimist's outlook.

I could just as easily envision an army of cheap, self-taught "programmers" making applications held together with spit and glue and causing a race to the bottom in the industry (see the residential construction industry for an example of this).