> they didn't threaten and actively work to put millions of SE on the street

Programmers in the 90s weren't less evil or had a stronger moral compass. They simply didn't have the opportunity to reduce the need for their fellow developers on a massive scale. They (we) would have, had we had the chance.

They (we) did it to tons of other industries. And we collectively patted ourselves on the back, saying that automation is a good thing and we're the good guys for doing it and people who lost their jobs will adapt and maybe they should just learn to code.

Now it's happening to (some of) us and suddenly it's evil?

No. The point is: programmers are whores. We like to act all righteous on forums, but very very few of us care enough about the consequences of our code to do something about it.

We either don't think about it ("what could go wrong?"), don't care about it (eh), justify it ("I need to eat!!!", "I'm just following orders"), or actively embrace it ("It's the future!").