"Programmers" are not new. Encoding of data with discrete bits (or lack of "bits") was used in the punched cards invented by Bouchon and Falcon (1732) Did they call the Frenchman "punchers" or "programmers? Who knows ? Who cares? It does not matter anyway. The encoding of text by bits (a dot and a dash) was/is also used in Morse code, which I had to learn for my yacht captain's certificate.. For the modern creation and input of coding datergy - a keyboard is the most common artefact used to enter instructions into the unthinking matter of computers. Alphanumeric code is used for transferring and storing datergy which can be represented later in 8-bit ASCII characters. Human programmers (aka; the human brain) digitally (keyboard fingering) arrange electrons in various patterns so that they influence various components of the devices that operate on principles of pulsed current which govern the behaviour of other (encountered) electrons. In most modern computing devices, a bit is usually represented by an electrical voltage or current-pulses, or by the electrical state of flippable circuitry using digit values of 1 and 0. Such current pulsing comprises the instructional code which implement the volitional requirements of the human programmer regarding the physical devices he and other people use as electronically operated illogical tools. Note: Only the illogical computer, the  logical programmer and the logical user exist - just as only the logical bowyer and bowman exist and there is no logical bow, bowstring or arrow.

Note there is nothing abstract or transcendent about all this - the will of the programmer and PC user is executed using dumb electrons - electrons (irrespective of what people call them or how they describe them) patently and obviously AFFECT things and humans can AFFECT them into AFFECTING other EFFECTEES - including the dance of electronically affected effectees impacting on the screen upon which your eyes are presently directed.

However much arrogant humankind may delude themselves they are superior to the other objects that surround them in the world, and however gullible they may be concerning the unsubstantiated claims that they have been created "in the likeness of god", however adroit they are at abstracting generalisations from particulars, however much they believe they have developed a "soul" or "mind" which has suspired from their grey matter like a achromatic invisible fog and become a separate entity or spirit-like, bi-associated product of the electro-chemically colligating neurology within - there is nothing "transcendental" about this programmer.

There is nothing in a programmer lacking material body, or form, or substance. There exists no compendium of a priori "wisdom" carried forward from a previous life as a man, a donkey or a butterfly. nor is there an "experienced and aggregated knowledge" which is "separate from" the linked complexities of neuron cells, the chemicals and synapsal switches, and the blood that feeds and fortifies the matrix. There is absolutely nothing "abstract" or "transcendentally occult," or dualistically separate from, or not in accordance with material nature, existing inside the programming coder's brain.

Likewise there is nothing "mysterious," difficult to understand," or "abstractive" on another "higher non-material level" above the empirical and material about the human tool we call a computer. or anything existing inside or outside of, or not in accordance with nature about the electronic components or atoms (force-fields, matergy or cosmic lollipops or whatever term various people like to attribute to what constitutes, in a conglomerate, coexistent, contiguous, collective form, (whatever the collective nature of such forms may be) the object called "a desktop PC." we use to write messages to this group, which, in the unlikely event that we should desire to - we could "affect" i. e. pick up from the desktop and throw it into a skip.

So why should we wish to award the term/symbol "syntax" or "semantic" to electron patterns? Has some mysterious, seraphic "inner force" or "meaning" or "syntatico-datergic sentential vital principle" or "animating force" been magically from human brain to the inanimate spinning metal hard-disk by the programmers tapping fingers? Have the evanescent particles of unscientifically named: "software" that are laser-recognised from a CD to dance upon the screen been brought to life and metamorphsised as something "existentially nameable" in an electronic climax of personification?

So what is all the kerfuffle about? All that has happened is that a programmer has translated and transferred the chemico-electronic symbols that store datergy, operate, change and control his own neurological computer - to a man-made electro-mechanical device in order to instruct that artefact to carry out his computational bidding? There is no "syntax" or "semantics" that ACTUALLY EXIST.

The mathematicisng, syntacticalisng and semanticising programmer imposes his volitional requirements using bunches of electrons in the form of sets of instructions that represent variable instructions in a abbreviated forms. Electrons are tools rather than punched holes in card - it is truly as simple as that.

As to whether some future programmers will be able to program "emotion" (in all its various human manifestations) into lifeless substances - I doubt it. Any progress (apart from making AI more efficient and faster,etc.) could in my view only be achieved by a gradual combination of human organisms with electronic replacements or supplementary components that improve calculative capability.