Shortly after leaving university, doing my first job, I was having a great time. I was working in Operational Research, a subject that on my Masters course had only used computers in passing. But in the company where I was applying it – British Airways – almost all the OR was done with computers.

Initially wary, I soon discovered I had an affinity for the things, and discovered the genuine creative joy of programming.

I can still remember the gut-wrenching horror I felt when seeing an advert for a new piece of software. My memory distantly labels this as ‘The Last One’. That could be memory playing tricks, but I have found this reference to it so I could be right.

Whatever it was called, the advert promised that it would mean companies could do away with programmers. No more programming. Just tell it what you wanted and it would write the program for you. And having just discovered I had something of a skill, plus a real passion for this programming thing, I was gutted.

Luckily for me, ‘The Last One’ was anything but what it says on the tin. With hindsight, this was predictable, but at the time it sounded a real possibility.

In science and technology, journalists find it particularly easy to fall for the lure of ‘The Last One’. How often have we heard something will mean ‘the end of…’ only to find days, months and years later things haven’t changed that much?

Is it that there are always fresh faced young things like I was back in 19 blah-di-blah, easily taken in by the latest promise? Or do we all secretly long for the magic wand that will take away something at a stroke? Perhaps that’s why Harry Potter is so popular…