Adam wrote:

(Oh, and it's not just sysadmins. Remember "visual programming"? Each time it gets reinvented, it's going to let business users do their own programming and get rid of all those overpaid programmers. Yeah, right. I still see lots of programmers. Just, hardly any of them write in assembler or COBOL anymore. Although 4GLs haven't exactly taken over the world...)

Trevor wrote:

Nice reply, Adam, guess the rest of MUUG is off to the cottage, or not an admin, or too busy shaking in their boots to reply :-) As we both said, no reason for anyone to get scared about any of this stuff as long as your skillset is deep and wide.

No cottage for me. I'm still here and enjoying this whole thread, which strikes a real chord with me. I've made many similar observations in my IT life. Even as far back as circa 1988-1990, I remember an IT journal article entitled "The End of Programmers (Again)". Non-programmers generally don't even understand or appreciate the concepts of algorithms and processes, and seem to think that a simple script without conditional logic/branching can do everything. Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331