The transition from agrarian to industrial societies was extremely painful and arguably it was centuries before the people affected were better off.
> Humans are resilient and will adapt.
Based on recent events I think it's more likely people will elect extremist politicians who promise quick fixes while blaming a convenient out-group for everything.
You meant "expand massively" i think. Did all the programmers manually making machine code get fired and the job of programmer disappear when compilers were invented and totally replaced these jobs? No, it just changed to use the new tool.
There wont be any unprecedented mass layoffs, despite what the jaded STEM-hating twitter crowd wants. Companies will simply make their programmers use these tools to increase the amount of produce per employee, and make software that would have been otherwise financially impossible to be made. Because the competition will do so too to get ahead.
> You meant "expand massively" i think.
> There wont be any unprecedented mass layoffs
Baghdad Bob strikes again.
What i think will lead to mass layoffs is the current recession rather.
> this is nothing new or unprecedented
Like what? Seriously, which cognitive occupation is safe then? I think if one wants to stop competing with the machines (who appear very close to becoming superior to humans by what you are saying), it's some kind of child care / social work job. We still don't want robots in those (for now. Eventually they may do those better than us as well).
But fret not, programming is not the first industry that has been automated into a shell of itself. Yes, the industry is going to shrink massively, but this is what new skills are for. Just as farmers had to learn industrial jobs and then miners and autoworkers had to "learn to code", most programmers will have to learn to do something else. Humans are resilient and will adapt.
And there will still be jobs in development for the most talented and in niche areas, but when the largest tech companies can layoff hundreds of thousands of employees without skipping a beat that should tell you all you need to know about the value of most "programming" jobs.