Parkinson's Law states, "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." While reading through Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming (specifically here, under "Rule of Modularity"), I came upon an interesting point that is worth distilling into its own, derivative law: "Software expands to use all the power available for its construction" (clearly that verbiage needs tuning). It seems that every few years, there is a New Big Thing in software that will eliminate all the complexity and result in a Brave New World without programmers and other complications. In the aforementioned text, Raymond astutely points out that every such thing has only served to allow projects of greater complexity to come about. There are many real-world examples of that. Indeed, that is clearly the rule rather than the exception. So maybe my pessimistic feelings about the future of my profession are overstated, and there is a long future ahead of me. I don't know that I want to be a programmer for the rest of my life, but maybe I will be able to leave by choice, rather than necessity.
I just noticed I didn't have a "programming" category. I found that odd, given how much of my time is spent programming (and thinking about programming).