Early on, programming was considered secretarial work.

> Early on, programming was considered secretarial work.

Incorrect.

Encoding a program was considered secretarial work, not the act of programming itself. Over time, "encoding" was shortened to "coding."

This is why the industry term "coder" is a pejorative descriptor.

> This is why the industry term "coder" is a pejorative descriptor.

For some people some of the time. I don't think that's true in general.

> This is why the industry term "coder" is a pejorative descriptor.

It is not.

It used to be widely seen as such. See for example Stallmanns latest post where he mentions that. Coder was not the same as programmer, it was the lesser half of the job. Nowadays the term has lost its original meaning.

That's always the promise of these things; non-specialists will be able to program now! This has been going on since COBOL. The one case where it arguably worked out to some extent was spreadsheets.

Anyone with complex spreadsheets (which is a lot of companies) has a few programmers with the job of maintaining them. The more training those people have in "proper programming" the better the spreadsheets work.

I would say that failed with SQL but succeeded with Excel. If you replace "office secretaries" with "office workers" in general.

It kinda came true. "Office secretaries" became PMs/junior analysts/etc and those people generally know basic SQL nowadays

I heard that from a lecturer too. It really stuck in the memory.