> I think HN's tune would be quite different if someone came up with a technology that eliminated half of all programming jobs.

We could easily eliminate half of all programming jobs if we just stopped creating work for ourselves. As it stands, we're the gatekeepers, our work is so opaque that no outsider could accurately estimate how much time we are wasting.

Luckily for us, markets aren't very good at eliminating this kind of inefficiency, see "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber.