Spell-check Vs Auto-correct

Years ago, programmers came up with spell check. You are typing away and spell check would highlight the word that you misspelled. Then you just go back to the highlighted word to change your typo. Very simple.

I'm not sure when it happened but spell check has all been replaced by auto-correct. This does't highlight your mistakes. It makes assumptions on what you are typing and then changes the word to something that is close to what you typed. But it does the change without you knowing it. And many times the word that it changes it to is not anything close to what you intended to type. Many times the word that it puts in totally changes the entire sentence.

I absolutely HATE auto-correct. Is there any way to get rid of it ? Who came up with this stupid program?