I would add that today many of us carry computers around in our pockets that can do all sorts of marvelous things and don't require any programming. The fact that an ever-increasing number of previously dumb devices contain computers doesn't imply the need for an ever-increasing number of programmers.

I have even less confidence in the job security of existing programmers who do scripting and/or programming that amounts to little more than patching existing modules together to get relatively simple effects. These jobs are just as susceptible to automation as those of assembly line workers. In software we're where the telephone industry was in the 1940's: there are 350,000 operators in the U.S. alone and the sky's the limit for good-paying jobs as telephone operators. We worry when a small percentage of these good operator jobs are outsourced to foreign workers. We should be worried about virtually all of them being eliminated by automated switches.