nymia: Yourdon's "Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" came out in 1993. In 1997, after the events he predicted didn't happen, he came out with "Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer." Copying from the Amazon.com review:

In 1992, Yourdon wrote The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, warning of impending loss of leadership by American software engineers. But a great deal has changed in three years, and Yourdon now sees a complete reversal of many of the trends he previously documented, as well as new trends such as the WWW, Java, "Good Enough" Software, and the enormous impact of Microsoft on the world of software and computing, that together signify the Resurrection of American software engineering.

You mention how the first book predates the internet, with the implication that that is more likely to cause a decline, but your argument goes contrary to his second book.

I've read a few of his books ("Decline", "Rise", "Death March"), and haven't been that impressed. Remember, this is a guy who moved from NY to New Mexico because of Y2K. He said something like "NM public infrastructure is the least dependent on high technology so the least likely to fail." (Oh, wait. I live in NM.)

So I now discount his ideas.