Also a lot of people got into the industry because they saw the salaries of programmers, but have no real passion for computers or software. They did the studying enough to pass the tests and write an algorithm to pass the interview and land a job. But they don't have the drive to make things better, think outside the box, or write something they can be proud of.

AI has accelerated this because it's becoming harder to detect the frauds.

The web and web apps as pushed by Google and others was another nail in the coffin of efficient software.

From Android to whatever web framework they’re peddling as development solutions, these are not designed for efficiency, but for time-to-market and consumption by front-end developers.

> became accustomed to GC languages

There is a certain amount of truth to that I think

I do not think anybody was “smarter”. There were smart and less smart people then and now.

But the “typical” practice changes. And that changes what you get. I think your “typical” programmer is more productive today in terms of what they can accomplish. But that work is going to be built at a higher level of abstraction and likely a lower level of run-time efficiency. As a percentage, fewer people understand or take into account the lower level details.

It is not just about new tech. After all, I can write all my code in RISC-V assembler. And I can manually allocate memory and manipulate pointers in C#. It is just not what people normally do these days.