> Economics gives us two contradictory answers simultaneously.
> Substitution. The substitution effect says we'll need fewer programmers—machines are replacing human labor.
> Jevons’. Jevons’ paradox predicts that when something becomes cheaper, demand increases as the cheaper good is economically viable in a wider variety of cases.
The answer is a little more nuanced. Assuming the above, the economy will demand fewer programmers for the previous set of demanded programs.
However. The set of demanded programs will likely evolve. So to over-simplify it absurdly: if before we needed 10 programmers to write different fibonacci generators, now we'll need 1 to write those and 9 to write more complicated stuff.
Additionally, the total number of people doing "programming" may go up or down.
My intuition is that the total number will increase but that the programs we write will be substantially different.