> It's not so much about replacing developers, but rather increasing the level of abstraction developers can work at, to allow them to work on more complex problems.
People do and will talk about replacing developers though.
Were many of the aforementioned advancements marketed as "replacing developers"? Absolutely. Did that end up happening? Quite the opposite; each higher-level abstraction only caused the market for software and demand for developers to grow.
That's not to say developers haven't been displaced by abstraction; I suspect many of the people responsible for re-wiring the ENIAC were completely out of a job when punchcards hit the scene. But their absence was filled by a greater number of higher-level punchcard-wielding developers.
Were many of the aforementioned advancements marketed as "replacing developers"? Absolutely. Did that end up happening? Quite the opposite; each higher-level abstraction only caused the market for software and demand for developers to grow.
That's not to say developers haven't been displaced by abstraction; I suspect many of the people responsible for re-wiring the ENIAC were completely out of a job when punchcards hit the scene. But their absence was filled by a greater number of higher-level punchcard-wielding developers.