We might ask, has humanity gotten better or worse? Given this impossible query, i will try to answer anyway. A caveat being i can only comment on direct observation of about 37 of those years.
The overall answer is software systems are solving multiple orders of magnitude more problems than 40 years ago. So much better from that perspective.
I suspect the questions behind the title question however are qualitative. Are we solving these problems in better ways? Is our code more maintainable? Easier to reason about? Faster to develop? Maybe. Probabably. Yes. Certainly not by the same orders of magnitude.
Frameworks and languages continue to pile on Rube Goldberg-esque construct upon construct. Long-lived systems must ultimately be scrapped or the businesses relying upon such antiquated systems replaced. The very few notable exceptions applying engineering effort to eliminate cruft are often overlooked in favor of whichever latest marketing spiel shouts the loudest.
Ah, so we are talking about humanity after all aren't we? :)
We are indeed talking about humanity. Apparently the human condition also includes taking the easy way out at the cost of long term pain.
I was inspired to write this post after reading about people trying to design better programming languages. I realized that PL design hasn't fixed our problems in the past, and it probably won't fix it in the future. We muddle through by improving our tools and processes.
The overall answer is software systems are solving multiple orders of magnitude more problems than 40 years ago. So much better from that perspective.
I suspect the questions behind the title question however are qualitative. Are we solving these problems in better ways? Is our code more maintainable? Easier to reason about? Faster to develop? Maybe. Probabably. Yes. Certainly not by the same orders of magnitude.
Frameworks and languages continue to pile on Rube Goldberg-esque construct upon construct. Long-lived systems must ultimately be scrapped or the businesses relying upon such antiquated systems replaced. The very few notable exceptions applying engineering effort to eliminate cruft are often overlooked in favor of whichever latest marketing spiel shouts the loudest.
Ah, so we are talking about humanity after all aren't we? :)