I think programmers (and related fields, like tech support) will be among the last to be rationalised away - even though much more money is invested into getting rid of them than getting rid of middle management, administration, and other such jobs, where it would often be trivial to let a computer do the work at much higher quality.

Edit: Programmers, understanding the technology, will simply be more able to adapt to changing needs.

Possible - depends on how the first ai is programmed. But they'll have much better memory than humans, so they'll quickly be able to learn all about coding - much more than any humans will ever understand about our genes.

The actual point here to me is that when computers are advanced enough to understand what we actually want not only from our words but also from context and 'knowing' us, they'll be intelligent enough to replace the person who wants the app (manager, politician...), too.

Edit: But the author of the comic does not seem to think that far - doesn't even get the fact that some programming languages are easier on the human brain than others.

For most people, the computer is just a tool. They see no reason to learn about the inner workings. They just want to be able to do things as easily as on another computer. And I see nothing wrong with that. It's neither laziness nor stupidity to concentrate on your job instead of wasting time trying to figure out a machine.

A complicated user interface, on the other hand, is something which I usually attribute to laziness (or lack of funds) of programmers.

And it's not just heard instinct. With all it's flaws, and even including all the not so great moments, the consumer oriented features on a Windows machine just work, and mostly w/o requiring terminal commands, and can do all that's actually required. No-one needs a great but unusual network setup when a newbie adding something will break everything. So some customisation is simply unnecessary. The same goes for many of the other options in Linux. Reacting by taking all options away will also not help anyone - because it destroys any reason not to go with a commercial system, where hundreds of people are employed just to iron out anything customers have difficulties with.

Linux is great for programmers, server admins, and a host of other areas - partly because it is a never-ending construction site were even the bigger distributions allow dozens of ways to format a disk, without telling the novice user which ones to avoid or which ones are good for what. But for someone who just wants to get things done and who does not earn his bread with nothing but file systems, that just costs time and therefore money - especially when you accidentally chose the wrong option some time ago.

I personally think Linux can succeed in the mainstream desktop market when it uses the advantages it has (security, no marketing limitations, compatibility w/ lots of formats...) while at the same time making things easy for anyone from novice users to computers experts who need to set up something they are usually not involved in.

Simple mouse operations in guis have removed sometimes very complex terminal commands. The same with more thought-through user interfaces, so that you don't need to use a terminal command every time you test a program you write. But every time I try to discuss something like that with people who'd like Linux to be more popular, I run into brickwalls. To me, those walls are just lazyness in thinking. There's nothing you can do with a complicated user interface which you couldn't do easier and faster with a well thought-out simple user interface.

Ubuntu versions 11 and 12. Unity isn't that old...

11 and 12. I remember I turned off Unity after a year of frustration and was slightly happier, but then my laptop broke and I never bothered again... Except when I got a raspberry - and the versions running on it officially where slow, so I now use it w/ tinycore - once every 6 months or so...

If we are talking about Unity, I'm glad they added some functionality to it. IIRC, no useful settings were available in the versions I tried. I hated it so much I completely gave up on it. Like probably thousands of others who believed the hype.

Think whatever you want. I must admit I actually gave up on Linux a while ago, though I still have it on a Raspberry I use every once in a while and a damaged laptop.

So far, I don't know of any distro which would allow a normal user to do all the tasks which are only sometimes needed (changing the language, erase and install the whole thing, and so on) without using terminal commands. Maybe you can enlighten me.

And I don't have a pc. Do you always personally attack anyone whose opinion differs from yours?