>Things never change, the old generation fights the new one and calls it stupid.
I was with you until here, which I think is the wrong take. That is, this gets it exactly backwards. It's not just that every generation gets upset at the previous generation so let's all shrug and move on, it's that this is really a thing that is unfolding from one generation to the next.
It seems like the reflex of oh well the previous generation said it so let's ignore it comes up a lot, to the point that I have this go to example that I use every time it does. I'm a baseball fan. And one thing you used to hear in the '80s, with a guy like, say, Rob Deer or Steve Balboni, was that they tried too hard to hit home runs and they struck out too much. Then you heard that in the '90s as well. Then you heard that in the 2000s, especially with money ball and guys like Jack Cust. Then it just kept getting even more extreme with guys Carlos Pena and now Joey Gallo.
So one thing you could say is, well, every generation says that there were less strikeouts in third day. But there's actually data on this and..... it's true! Almost every decade, from the 1800s through every decade of the 1900s through now, strikeouts really have been going up year to year. And so that intergenerational commentary, well, it's describing a real thing that really is happening.
The same can be said of other things, like people saying they always used to remember the environment being better. Or people saying attention spans are getting shorter. But, they are.
The instinct here I think is to dismiss these since every generation says it. But I think the conclusion should be opposite, that these are real things unfolding on a multi-generational level. So if you see it happening with software, maybe that's because there's really something to it.