I think this quote from an ACM interview with Donald Knuth in answer to a question on the future of programming sums up the problem of the current state of programming nicely:
"I'm worried about the present state of programming. Programmers now are supposed to mostly just use libraries. Programmers aren't allowed to do their own thing from scratch anymore. They're supposed to assemble reusable code that somebody else has written. There's a bunch of things on the menu and you choose from these and put them together. Where's the fun in that? Where's the beauty in that? We have to figure out a way we can make programming interesting for the next generation of programmers."
"I'm worried about the present state of programming. Programmers now are supposed to mostly just use libraries. Programmers aren't allowed to do their own thing from scratch anymore. They're supposed to assemble reusable code that somebody else has written. There's a bunch of things on the menu and you choose from these and put them together. Where's the fun in that? Where's the beauty in that? We have to figure out a way we can make programming interesting for the next generation of programmers."
reference: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1378715