The way I see it, the lowest point may have been the 60s, then it briefly rose in the 80s to "wizards", continued to rise 'till the early 2000s, and now is in sharp decline, as everyone and their dog is now a software developer.
Software developers were never the hero’s of the story. It was always the prettier people egging them on for the greater good while they talked about how smart they were.
That’s changed lately. With the need for ever more developers the average skill has gone down but that is orthogonal to status in society.
The way I see it, the lowest point may have been the 60s, then it briefly rose in the 80s to "wizards", continued to rise 'till the early 2000s, and now is in sharp decline, as everyone and their dog is now a software developer.