I lost any significant sustained interest in the detail of software coding after 1988, when I discovered IEF. I determined at that time that higher-order modelling was the direction the I.T. industry should follow.
Well, here we are in 2005, and higher-order modelling has still not been properly embraced by this industry, which is a matter of some frustration to me. However, it is my belief that any US-based software developer who does not learn to rise a level of abstraction when providing solutions is living on borrowed time, except for a few niche areas. Here is a posting that I wrote on my employer's internal blog about this topic, after a meeting with one of the corporation's thought leaders:

Commoditization and offshoring of 3GL (i.e. coding-level) software delivery activities based mostly on cost is well under way. India is the current de facto world leader, but China will overtake India over the next 10-20 years as China gears up, and as India's costs rise. This will force the Indian 3GL developers up the abstraction scale to where they wil begin to play in (and possibly dominate) the application assembly space. In the meantime, US and Europe-based software developers will need to move up one or two levels of abstraction or risk fnding their job sent overseas, without them being attached to it any more...
The name of the game if you are a US or Europe-based software developer is to rise one or more levels of abstraction. Roles that should be considered are Business Analyst (which requires the acquisition of news skills such as conceptualization and abstraction), Architect (also requiring conceptualization and abstraction), User Experience and User Interface design (which, by virtue of requiring face-to-face contact with customers, is not amenable to offshoring), and Project Management (yes, I know this is a swear-word to many software developers, but not all authority figures are the devil incarnate).