Knitting machines

Is being a programmer going to become like being a knitter as a profession — enjoyed by some as a hobby, but not professionally viable except for a few extremely skilled and determined individuals?

I tried to see if I could fill out this analogy: At one point, knitting was the way you could make (stretchy, woolen) clothing¹. So, human labor was a bottleneck to getting this type of clothing, which gave it economic value. If you were pretty good at knitting, you could make a living when many people needed clothing and only a few were skilled and patient enough to do it full time.

Then at some point, machines were invented which could knit clothing. The machines couldn’t match the best knitters, but they were probably better than the worst knitters, and much faster than all humans. Since most people just wanted the end result (woolen socks), and not “woolen socks made by a person”, machines would have ended the job of full-time knitter. There were probably many people upset by this change, and I’m sure it was common to hear “why would I use a machine, I enjoy knitting!” and “If I use the machine my knitting skills are going to atrophy!”, but it wouldn’t have changed the economics of the situation.

I thought the comparison was a bit of a stretch (yuk yuk), but then I found this gem on Wikipedia about knitting machines ²:

In 1589, William Lee of Nottinghamshire invented the first knitting frame, or stocking frame, which was an early form of the knitting machine. Lee petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for a patent but was denied due to the coarse nature of the frame-knit fabric and the fear that frame knitting would take away the jobs of hand knitters in England. … Similar to quilting, spinning, and needlepoint, hand knitting became a leisure activity for the wealthy.