>> Unfortunately, this won't last forever. Other countries are catching up to the U.S. quickly. Eventually, development will move to cheaper labor countries like so many other industries. What is frustrating though is that if the U.S. actually focused on developing its talent, we could maintain the lead for another decade or two longer than if we just sit on our hands. With that extra lead time, we could come up with the next major industry (AI-training? quantum computer programming?), but as it stands now, many other countries will be equally poised to jump on the next opportunity and we'll squander our lead forever.

Agreed. I have several (very smart) coworkers in other countries. And our political system is an atrocious thing to watch these days. Whatever happened to compromise?

I don't think anybody really knows for sure what the future holds. The thing is with cloud computing and with the spread of technology into the developing world they will likely be needing engineers too.

Of course that may not happen if the software world is so carved up that all of the business goes to a handful of companies that are employing a fixed number of people and concentrating the gains.

And if Elon Musk has a breakthrough with neuralink, then maybe we'll all be out of a job. Why write code when you can think print('hello world')?

On the other hand, big players can get disrupted, technology can change, and its not like every human being has the capacity/stomach for the abstract problem solving we do day to day.