Hand Coding
It is headed that way.
Ie, when postscript first came out you had to manually code postscript code >being fed to the printer... 99.99999999999% of graphic designers out there >have probably never seen anything like that. They compose their page, spit >it out to be rip'd and thats that.
Not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.
I think it is a good thing. In any case, it happens in every field as it advances, so there is no avoiding it.
People who want to can always do it the old fashioned way. Those doors are never closed. Their work will look like it, but so what, if that's what they like to do. A few probably will, for awhile.
Nobody, anymore, seals himself in a black tent and floats a collodion emulsion onto a sheet of glass, then as soon as it gels, shoves it in a plate holder and rushes to put it in the camera and take the picture, then get back to the tent and develop it before any spots dry in the collodion. Despite those inconveniences, there were some fine photographs made that way ... some of them surpassing in quality what was done later with far more advanced methods and equipment. If you ever get a chance to see some of William Henry Jackson's photographs of the west, you will know what I mean. Of course his negatives were 16 x 20 inches ... hard to beat that for detail and image quality. In the last few years there has been a revival of Curtis's work, too. Beautiful portraits of Native Americans. Nothing I have seen coming out of a Nikon, even with color, compares.
I imagine there are some things about hand coding that will be hard to beat, too.