MJF and WHG on Oslo

I attended Davids talk at NDC2008 (www.ndc2008.no) and as a BizTalk dev I found it interesting. Not sure what to make of the visual editor and the repository, but the Process server sounds to me like a very good idea. It really depends on how the market and sell it. I'd prefer it if the basics of it was free. And then you'd have to pay to host BizTalk hosts and to utilize the Lifecycle Manager stuff. But the very basics should be free IMO. That way everybody can get a little WF action! :)

I attended the session and I found it interesting.  I kept thinking about how Microsoft's vision of Oslo & WPF/Silverlight are moving more and more of the coding effort away from programmers and towards other specialists.

If the application and infrastructure architects build the framework of the solution from infrastructure, application, and entity models, and then the business analysts use the Visual Editor to build out the workflows and graphic artists use Expression or Adobe to build out the user experience, the role of the true hard core coder is shrinking.  

Does the true hard core coder become the specialist who just builds activities that can be fit into a business analyst's workflow?  Does building activities start to become the equivalent of building device drivers for the operating system, delegated to a small handful of true hard-core developers?

Assuming that this vision succeeds, this will revolutionize the way that software is developed--it becomes the equivalent of the industrial revolution for the software industry.

As a developer, though, it makes me wonder what the role will be for me and my colleagues after the dust settles.  Will we end up displaced like so many factory workers in the automobile industry? Or will we find more interesting roles in the new order?