Anytime we became more productive in the past we become in a way that didn't remove engineers, just increased the abstraction an engineer would work in. And we did it at times of rapid expansion of computing and internet, meaning way more need for engineers counter-balancing the increased productivity.

>The world’s appetite for software has been insatiable so far.

Has it? The expansion of IT has reached global saturation, we're getting desparate, and try to push shit like Blockchain and IoT, and shoving "smart" features even where people don't want them.

And the world is full of software nobody or very few care for or use/subscribe/buy. App Store have huge "long tails" of stuff nobody cares for.

And with autonomous agents we designed something to replace the engineer altogether. So even if the demand for software increases, that can be like "spawn more agents" not "get more developers".

Some human supervisors per N agents? Sure. Equal human demand as what's now? Unlikely.

In general "we did it 5 times, to we'll surely do it 6" is not a real argument, just a hope that something will never end.