This has been the story for over a decade. Thins are easier. The cloud, more CPU, more RAM. No one really pays attention to performance, detail, and the little things. There is no craft in anything - just FEATURES.

AI will just make this so much worse - a race to the bottom of dull mediocrity.

Yeah but buying a sofa from Ikea doesn't let people steal my banking passwords. There are serious consequences to software bugs that there aren't in cheaper ready-made clothing.

Fair.

I just have the feeling that it doesn't get the job done anymore.

I hope we will see the rise of alternatives.

Your analogy is one indirection from being a fit. Factories usually get custom solutions for their production facilities, tailor made by specialist engineers. They then run the production and deliver mass produced goods to the markets. We software engineers aren’t delivering tailor made solutions straight to the consumer markets. We are much more like the engineers who set up the machinery in the production facility, and our software is much closer to that machinery then it is to the mass produced table you buy at Ikea.

Yeah, someone wrote: the future of apps, one user, me