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When I started professionally programming in 2000, I was doing websites with ColdFusion. The language was relatively simple, but allowed rapid creation of dynamic websites. I believed that I could write a website as fast as anybody else with any other technology at the time. I was a serious believer in ColdFusion and its simplicity.
The naysayers however said that ColdFusion was not scalable or efficient. They continuously stated that it was an inefficient language. While I disagreed with their assessment, the proof was in other developer's work (I'm not saying I'm completely exempt from this statement).
I believe ColdFusion was too easy to program in. This lead to non-developers becoming web developers and writing some horrible code. That code often made it to production and made ColdFusion based sites look poor. Serious software developers moved away from the language, and demand fell.
While the ColdFusion language is not dead, it is much easier to get a job as a php or asp.net developer.
A quick monster.com search revealed the following:
8 ColdFusion jobs nationwide
1,000+ ASP.NET jobs nationwide.
By having a language that is too easy, it draws in the "wrong" people and brings its own downfall. Programming in the future will always have to be complex enough to keep out non-developers. This protects a language from loosing favor. There will always be a place for Access or Lightswitch, but we need to keep programming a little bit on the complex side.
Hogan
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I don't know coldfusion, but I partially agree with you.
In my view, programming languages (and frameworks, IDEs and so on) must help developers avoid bad practices. In such sense, many times it is better to have a little harder to use environment that helps developers creating good code than having real easy frameworks that guide people in the wrong direction.
But that's another problem, as someone may overcome a difficulty with a "wrong technique" that becomes popular, and then everything falls apart. Sometimes the difficulties to make the code work simple makes all developers to go away. It is never 100% sure.
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Ok. That explains the antipathy of VC++ coders toward VB coders! 
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Real programmers will still toggle in machine code from the front panel. You know I don't even own a keyboard. I'm actually using a new device that converts the vibrations from my brain into magnetic interference patterns that when generated at the proper inclination of my neck cause the keyboard buffer bits to flip at my whim.
Downvoted, really? It was a joke. Geez.
modified on Friday, September 16, 2011 10:01 AM
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I think programming is just as hard/simple as before (and in the future). Only the platform has changed (before it was console, then DOS, then Linux or Windows GUI, 1 core but now multiple cores)
We are now able to create more powerful software at the expense of abstraction and less efficiency because of deepening abstraction.
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Over the years, We have seen programmer solving common man's problem by programming, pushing the complexity at the programmers' end
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I mean, think about it. We already have specialization:
WPF / other graphic design specialists
.NET language and framework specialists
SQL / database architecture specialists
web development specialists
back-end server architecture specialists
domain specialists (economics, science, etc...)
tool specialists (everything from source control to support tools)
documentation specialists
threading / parallel processing specialists
and I imagine the list goes on.
Marc
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Developers have always limited the complexity of programming.
Any language or framework that is too difficult to use productively will not be used very much at all.
So the complexity of programming will keep pace with the abilities of the developer community.
I think the variable is the developer community.
More and more people are joining this community and the entry bar is getting lower all the time.
But these new people are not doing the same work as experienced and talented developers.
There is a huge and growing market for basic apps which rely on 3rd party libraries to do the heavy lifting.
And that's fine.
There is still a role for more able developers and I think it will always exist.
Someone's got to write the frameworks, after all.
Nick
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First there were gears and cogs and a programmer was a very skill job.
Next there were values and programming was still a very skill job but you need different skills.
Then there were Transistors and tapes and cards and programming became more flexible, you could do more with the hardware. Was it more complex? The programmes were more complex but writing them was easier.
Then there was the microchip (LSI) all hail the new future. Lose the switches and dials and make way for the keyboard and the VDU. You now could have an operating system to write your programs in. You could talk to the hardware without writing all the code to do it. It was easier to write a program to do the same as before, but you could do more tasks so the programs became more complex.
Now we are in a wizzy world with clouds were communication and information is king. The basics are fundamentally the same though. Get data, Process data, and display data. The bells and whistles are there now so programming is more complex. When displaying the results of a calculation on a dumb terminal you didn't need it to be pale blue size 10 bold and in Arial. It was enough that it was there on the green screen.
Sorry about all the waffle
But my conclusion is that the as the tasks get more complex the tools change to suit the task and the overall programming experience will stay the same.
Why is it when you are busy everyone whats it yesterday, But when your not no-one has any work for you?
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I am sure it will become more and more simpler in future.
But the dark side of it, new comers to the programming will never learn the concept behind the code. Programmers may generate the complete code just by selecting some value in a properties window, but they will never learn how stuff works.
I feel that this is a real threat! 
I appreciate your help all the time...
CodingLover 
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keep trying to put different shaped pegs in rounds holes, it will definitely get more complex.
- S
50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!
Code, follow, or get out of the way.
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You might as well ask if BACON will become more or less delicious.
Seriously as we get more and more complex systems to develop, the skills involved will become more complex. The art of the good designers and developers will be to provide the most outlandishly complex solutions via the most simple and intuitive interface.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H
OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre
I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer
Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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But we will have better tools (in general atleast)
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Programming is Programming. No matter the language, that much is always a constant.
The true question delves into what is a programmer.
Is it the guy who can whip out a "Hello World!"? How about the one who can make the screen blink and the speaker beep when I win a game of tic-tac-toe? Or, the guy who programmed the laser machine that scanned my optic "fingerprint", compared it to the "fingerprint" on the flash drive and then commenced with my LASIK surgery?
50 years ago through today, programmers make things work. They specialize in one of many different techniques and complexities. One might make life a whole lot easier for us. Then the evil ones come and deprecate all the coolest commands and make life difficult for us all over again.
It is all a pendulum. Things get easier. Things get harder. At the end of the day, you either know what you're doing or you don't.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
-irresponsibility@Despair.com
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Every day, almost every programmer in the world works to make programming applications simpler. I have been coding for a good many years and there is no doubt it is easier to do complex things today than it was just, say, 5 years ago. Sure we are doing more complex things to make up for it, but at least now simple things are simple to do (that step 1). I can not understand why anyone would believe that programming will always have the same complexity when that has clearly not been the case up to now.
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I think for programmer like IDE user it will become simpler, but for people who design programming / framework it will become harder.
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I see it as complex things today will be abstracted and simplified. Yet as today's complex projects become simple and our understanding increases, the boundaries of programming will be pushed even further and newer, emerging problems will be even more complex.
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I think if we look back, we realize that it has always become simpler to program as the years pass by. Today we accomplish much more with a lot less effort than before.
Under the hood and inside the APIs the complexity is hidden, but the programming task itself has become simpler, unless for some very specific tasks like programming against hardware.
I don't see why this movement could have a tendency to invert. That's why I believe programming will always become simpler, even if the amount of simplicity again diminishes.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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case 1:
at beginning:
a>debug
jump C800:0005
and BIOS menu appears to format a drive
now you can right click a disk and format, many time in wrong format or deleting important data
case 2:
start floppy
LOAD driver x
LOAD xxx
LOAD yyy
BIND zzz
LOAD INSTALL
and you can install a Novell Netware
now with autoplay a W2008R2 server can be up and running (with all kinds of unnecessary services and protocols) in 20 minutes.
case 3:
MS C version 3.0 ( 1984-85?) on two 5" floppy and 350Kb of disk requirements, external editor
now a multigigabyte DVD install dozens of wastefull tools, but with a wizard you can create a "Hello word" sample of 4Mb (why not click all those fancy checkbox ?)
Ok we can do all simpler, and more in the future.
The point is not if we will run quicker, faster and in a simpler way, but where we will run and if we understand that technologies are only a (small) part of the solution.
 This only 'cause I have plenty of time, I need to backup my "tool and lib" dir that is 43.2Gb.. ( Signs of times )
P.S. my vote is for the choice simpler
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Answering such polls with extreme sides is not useful 
I think coding might be integrated simpler in the future with advanced methods, but codes would be more complicated and structured for sure.
Bekir Sait
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More and more frameworks will be introduced, each carefully designed to make conversion of code to any other framework all but impossible.
Furthermore, intensive lobbying at the EU will pass laws making it illegal to create any tools that convert framework based code written in EU Member States to be converted to US-based frameworks.
China will, as usual, be allowed to do what they want because they will, anyway.
Framework hacking will be the most important and prestigious coding field. Interpol will be watch.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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You will always have simple programmers!
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Wow, that's kind of depressing when you think about it.
I'd say it depends how far in the future you're thinking about. Maybe a paradigm shift will yet occur that impacts computer programming in a way comparable to impact the introduction of computers has had on mathematics, theoretical physics and biology.
I was going to try change my vote, on this basis - doesn't seem possible though.
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Rob Grainger wrote: I was going to try change my vote, on this basis - doesn't seem possible though.
It's not simpler to change the vote too 
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