If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

Because the barriers to entry are really low and there is a vast supply of people willing to have a go.

And, I have to say, compared to many fields most development isn't actually that difficult - I suspect a reasonably intelligent and motivated person could probably be trained to do 95% of all development jobs within a year or so.

Actually it's not. Name calling would be if I called you an entitled whiner. There's a difference between attacking your argument and attacking you. (And if we're sticking to the taxonomy, that part of my comment would be DH2, "responding to tone".)

Evidence?

That was the crux of my post. Programmers do get filthy rich (usually via starting tech companies). You're right that at that point they're not programming, but that's because programming in isolation has limited economic value. Using the skills one acquires as a programmer and aiming them at value creation has created a large chunk of America's billionaires. And while that phenomenon is not unique to programming in the least -- in fact, it holds across almost any skilled trade (i.e. soft-skills begin to dominate hard-skills) -- the upper bound is demonstrably higher for programming (as evidenced by the list of richest Americans) than it is for almost any field.

American Xs are paid better than non-American Xs because America has a high GDP per capita

No, I meant relative to GDP per capita. I live in Germany where programmer salaries are about 50% above the GDP per capita, whereas in the US it's about 75%. From what I've gathered, in the UK, it's closer to 25%.

Citation?

It's nigh on impossible to measure "respect" in some sort of meaningful way, but here's a list from a couple seconds of Googling on the "Best Jobs in America":

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2010/full_l...

  1: Software Architect
  7: Database Administrator
  18: Software Engineering / Development Director
  20: Information Technology Manager
  21: Telecommunications Network Engineer
  24: Network Operations Project Manager
  26: Information Technology Business Analyst
  30: Test Software Development Engineer
  31: Information Technology Network Engineer
  33: Information Technology Program Manager
  38: Applications Engineer

One of the things that's somewhat endemic to your case is shifting back and forth between comparing the median with the top tier. Average doctors, bankers and lawyers aren't making the salaries you suggested. Median programmers aren't particularly impressive.

Let's split it out:

Elite programmers do things like start software companies, work at corporate research labs, work in financial engineering or work on high-profile open source projects. Those folks command respect and have high earning potential. (Though interestingly, among the elite of these groups, programmers probably have the lowest percentage of completed formal training.)

Elite investment bankers are measured heavily on their returns and a large portion of their compensation is bonuses. Elite lawyers are measured on their returns (wins) and compensated to a significant extent relative to their non-legal social skills (i.e. their network).

Median programmers write intellectually trivial code that solves uninteresting problems. Training is optional and there are virtually no systematic hurdles to cross to enter the trade. They still make relatively high salaries relative to societal norms.

Median lawyers work on intellectually trivial cases. Formal training and certification is required and compensation is relatively high, but nothing that will generate notable wealth. Median investment bankers (my father would have been in said category) mostly convince a handful of clients they've been given by their organization to invest in a 90% cookie cutter portfolio and are compensated reasonably well -- varying largely on their ability to source their own clients. (But first year run of the mill stock brokers probably make less than first year run of the mill programmers.) Formal training is theoretically optional (though there's a de facto requirement of a degree in something) and formal certification is required. Again, no notable wealth is generated in this category.

At the low end, the gap isn't particularly wide between these groups. At the high end, folks from finance and programming backgrounds comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the economic ultra-elite and lawyers of the political ultra-elite. It still bewilders me that given that demonstrable fact, that you'd brand our profession as not getting any respect.

No. Because a majority of people don't like software, programmers and automation. They don't see programmers as an example because they don't want it to be this way.

1) They are perceived as eating their jobs. You can explain increased productivity all day, but someone out of a job due to a computer program curses you.

2) It is hard to understand for laymen what they actually do. A doctor's jargon is also hard to understand, but at least solves problems visible to most.

A lot of people are borderline-luddites, others are more compromising and like applied technology as long as it serves them. But very few, I think only scientists and programmers (and the people that get rich from them) actually like where the world is going.

Not that it is possible to stop the software eating the world... It could be that the problem will solve itself, eventually, because the more of the world is 'eaten' by computers and software, the more powerful the people controlling them will be.