The issue in the article isn't that there will be novice programmers or lawyers, it's that if you can even become a novice programmer or lawyer, you're supposedly already in "Extremistan". The premise is well-contained in the quote early on that "most people are like horses" and can't operate in fields that require primarily intellectual labor.
I'm not sure that I agree with this premise, but it means that it's not an issue of crowding out newbies, just an expression of the popular sentiment that "[insert highly-paid professional position here] are really, really smart" and that to even attempt to become a highly-paid professional x is out of the reach of most people.
It seems that the want to keep out sufficiently bad workers is already being seen by some that employ programmers - that they would rather not have an extra programmer than to have a sub-par programmer, because the 'contribution' that that programmer brings is on the whole negative by mostly introducing bugs that others have to clean up etc. We'll see if the bar for sub-par will keep being raised...
I'm not sure that I agree with this premise, but it means that it's not an issue of crowding out newbies, just an expression of the popular sentiment that "[insert highly-paid professional position here] are really, really smart" and that to even attempt to become a highly-paid professional x is out of the reach of most people.
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