For better or worse, this isn't true. Software development to some extent is a creative process, thus eluding automation in many ways, though not for lack of t

For better or worse, this isn't true. Software development to some extent is a creative process, thus eluding automation in many ways, though not for lack of trying. Much like book authors, in the general case, can't really "re-use" subplots of one another's stories, software devs can't really, in the general case, re-use one anoher's implementations. Of course there are many more specific situations in which software may be re-usable than there are for subplots in books .. but that doesn't impact the overall argument. Much like a detective story will have some crime being commited by some perpertrator, harming some victim and being investigated by some detective, an e-mail client will run on some OS have some GUI and exchange some IMAP and SMTP messages. But the creation of the specific detective story and the specific e-mail client still require creative input by some human before they can come into existence. Or is your argument that there is less need for e-mail clients and detective stories because there already are enough of them in existence? If so, then this is an issue orthogonal to automation itself.