> There will always be software engineering problems to solve, they just move up the stack...

When fewer and fewer people are needed to do the same work it doesn't necessarily make for a better or more sustainable market: socially or ecologically. Consider a world where one needs 40 years of education (instead of say 20) to begin to contribute in a way the capital owners are willing to pay for. And paying for the privilege of much of that education.

That's true, as technology advances, the knowledge needed to maintain it increases. In 50 years the software stack could require petabytes of memory to run complex simulations..

But to me that's a pessimistic way to look at it. It's an accomplishment to need less people to build amazing things.

We're already at a point where even the most experienced engineer can only understand a fraction of the stack they use. Compare that with the 1970's where a programmer might understand 90% of the mainframe they use... because it was simpler...

Basically you don't need to know as much knowledge as earlier generations to accomplish the same thing, but this devalues that thing (or makes it much harder to be good at) ... All the low hanging fruit is gone I guess

My larger point is that there could be fewer paying roles and less willingness to pay for anything. A society of a few owners, few paid workers, and everyone else without much/any influence is not a balanced or healthy one.