As the field of software development becomes more professionalized, and the software development process becomes more formalized, there is a growing belief that the job of the front-line programmer is becoming---or must become, out of economic necessity---de-skilled.
This belief is predicated on the assumption that new principles, processes, and tools have made the modern programmer's job simpler than that of his predecessors, however, this is not necessarily so. In this paper we show that essential aspects of the programming activity involve skills that have not been eliminated by progress in the field. The programmer's task does evolve with new tools and methods, but the essential skill---making rational tradeoffs in the presence of an abstract model---remains.
Full paper Appears in Proceedings of the 2003 IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications (SEA), Marina del Rey, California, November 2003..