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The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer

In his 1991 book, The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, Ed Yourdon wrote: "The American Programmer is about to share the fate of the dodo bird. By the end of this decade, I foresee massive unemployment among the ranks of American programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers. Not because fifth-generation computers will eliminate the need for programming, or because users will begin writing their own programs. No, the reason will be far simpler: international competition will put American programmers out of work, just as Japanese competition put American automobile workers out of work in the 1970s."1

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