Via Patrick Logan, I came across this piece by Robert Cooper - and this quote on the utility of BPM tools to make development easier:

And here is where it breaks down. All these unusable drag and drop tools, and “easy” XML programming languages aren’t targeted at programmers. They are targeted to suits who can buy into the idea that some non-techy is going to orchestrate these services and modify business rules. These products are unworkable because they are based on the idea that “You won’t need programmers anymore!” at least at a core level. Once you make that assumption you start building things that get in programmers way, and still include enough abstract programming concepts that no non-programmer is ever going to be able to work with it proficiently

The funny thing is, this idea of eliminating the programmer was one of the original goals of Smalltalk. It hasn't worked out that way; neither mainstream languages (like Java), nor the niche ones (Smalltalk, Lisp) have been picked up as general purpose tools for the masses.

There are DSL tools out there that provide higher productivity for general audiences; you can consider spreadsheets with their macro languages to be DSLs, for instance. Even there, everyone sees the scaling problems - we've all seen overly complex, unmaintainable spreadsheets.

The bottom line is, we haven't reached nirvana yet. Unless you have a highly focused (and smallish) problem, you probably need software developers.

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