Not defending this guy, but it's not like we are still making the same product (pastry equivalent) as 1999. We go through the automation and then build on top, right?
The next time you see a bus (public transportation) suppose that every person on it were committed to joining your bakery as a junior baker, and one at a time you must teach each of them how to follow one particular recipe exactly. You have two hours with each person. How many of them, if they are motivated and attentive, could you train to be able to follow any recipe?
Now repeat the thought experent, a busful of motivated people. If you have two hours to teach them to be junior software developers, how many will you succeed with?
There are no clear steps any non-dev (who does not know what a loop or if statement is) can follow to start developing. You can't use a non-developer as a junior dev, unless they're an incredibly fast learner and willing to put in incredible amounts of training on their own or on your time.
(I am talking about following other people's recipes exactly, not coming up with new ones.)
When you are mass-producing a pastry, the other 25% is still robotic repetition.
Software development is as much robotics as baking. I'd guess that easily 75% of the tasks being performed by programmers in 1999 are fully automated by APIs and frameworks today.