I don't think "professional" is some sort of goal to strive for. The existence of professional programmers today is a sign of how immature our software/society is. The ultimate goal of EUP is to replace this priesthood. Along the way we definitely have to make choices about the sequence in which a new stack and methodology eats the universe of use cases.

But... we have, for example, professional cooks even though people are able to cook at home. Same holds true for very many professions. I don't see how enabling users will eliminate software development as a profession.

1. It may not. There may still be people who make their livelihood from it. But (to mention a concrete symptom for a more abstract goal) I'd like to see them/us make a lot less money than we do today. Among the implications, it would become lower-status, fewer people would get into it, and we'd be less likely to think of it as a goal to strive for. 2. Philosophically, I believe with insufficient justification that programmers (and legislators) are fundamentally different from other kinds of professions. They ought to be meta-professions that are just too much power to centralize. Analogies to mechanics and cooks don't apply, IMO. The analogy I prefer is to professional letter-writers, who are now fortunately mostly extinct because most people in the developed world can write for themselves.

1. I do agree the programming industry is a bit overblown currently. However since (barring weird AI scenarios) I see the future as being more and more about programming, I can still see growth in this. I would agree many current tasks of programmers would pay a lot less, however I also see well designed "artisan systems" to stay or increase in value. Although one factor to consider here is the reusability of software. If the interoperability problem is solved to a certain degree, it could be that writing new software is rarely needed instead of a mix&match approach. But solving that to such a degree feels a bit utopistic to me, in that deeper programming skills will still be needed to connect parts together properly. 2. Well I do agree that programming is somewhat different making most analogies flawed - including my specific ones. But I also think the letter-writer analogy is similarly flawed. I would say the menial programming tasks can be on the civil skill level (anyone can stitch together their own inventory handling system or whatnot) but I don't think putting together complex systems is a skill you can just pick up on the side - which is where we'll still need the programming profession (and enthusiasts). I expect distinct levels of programming to emerge (obviously with quite blurry lines).

Moreover, "programming" means so many things: basically any sort of mechanization or automation involving a computer.

@Kartik Agaram For me, a professional programmer isn't necessarily a full-time software developer. I'd use that term also for professionals who need to write software as part of doing their work. The end-user <-> professional scale is about how much effort one can justify to invest in learning.

I don't really understand how the end-user <–> professional dichotomy helps anyone in any way, other than feeding our own egos. The people we build software for are likely all professionals in some domain, likely just not ours. And in that case we're the dumb ones who don't understand the specifics of their domain, and the problems they're trying to solve with the software we build for them. That's part of why developing software is hard too. It's not just about our languages our tools. It's also about them. We can only be of service if we try to understand their problem well enough, which means starting to understand their domain well enough to build something good. It's no accident that great software often comes from developers who are experts in that other domain too, trying to solve their own problem. And trying to invent a universal tool that works across many domains doesn't mean you don't have to look at other domains anymore. It means that you have to attempt to understand many domains — and because we can't just become experts on everything we're back to deep collaboration with real empathy with the people we'd like to serve.

@Stefan For me, "professional" doesn't mean "better" in some way. The end-user <-> professional scale is about the level of engagement. We have the same scale in so many other aspects of life, e.g. cooking or carpentry. There are tools and techniques optimized for people on various places along the scale, and yet moving along the scale does not require unlearning existing skills or abandoning familiar tools. I'd like to see the same for programming.

This seems to fit here: https://twitter.com/rebeccaslatkin/status/1165424331750617093?s=21

Catnip! HSBC man! I explain to people that going into a branch is like starting a debugger. A debugger doesn't solve problems but does give you a look inside.