Why are software engineers so hard to replace?

Every few years, someone will proudly declare they have an idea or technology that will replace expensive software engineers (or at least make us less expensive). These include everything from early programming languages such as Fortran and Cobol, WYSIWYG editors, diagram-based programming, modern programming languages such as TypeScript, and, most recently, AI coding tools. So far, these innovations have helped developers by abstracting away time consuming and repetitive tasks, which has made us more efficient, more specialized, and has allowed us to build increasingly complex systems. This talk will explore the history of technologies that were supposed to make us obsolete, how they’ve actually helped us, and why we’re so hard to replace.