Your reply is exactly what I needed as ammunition to people who don't see how machines can really help us in the future - if you don't mind, I'll paraphrase this comment! Too many people I talk to who aren't computer programmers but maybe, designers or architects who have been to a few conferences, don't believe there is revolution yet to come.
I'm a 47 year old programmer who doesn't think a revolution is yet to come because I actually think programming is far more creative in nature than we can ever give to a machine.
Not that there won't be tools to assist the human programmers, but the robot uprising will never occur until we can at least answer the very basic question of why will the robots care, and how exactly, in some non-hand-wavey fashion, will they get creative about solving novel problems?
Consider this: You can write a genetic algorithm maker which will randomly iterate through all possible abstract syntax tree morphs and then run a test that evaluates whether the code "performs better" as a solution to some given need, and eventually you might strike upon some novel way of solving a problem through pure randomness. But here's the thing: The ultimate arbitrator of "what is better" will always be a human and the ultimate agent of "need" is a human as well. Machines just don't "need" things, like a faster way to ray-trace so your videogame open-world simulation is more immersive, or even a nicer GUI, much less a better way to make money... People need all these things, and people evaluate whether the machine reduces those needs. Machines DNGAF.
When people say to me eventually computers will program themselves and I’ll be out of a job, I think that’ll be the least of our worries, as humans will become redundant.
I like to say that programming is the last job that will be automated. To normal people it's a turn of phrase; tech people understand that I'm literally referring to the impending end of life as we know it.
