> The ocean we swim in has gotten bigger and deeper.

IMO this is the part that the author is missing. Back in the 2000's, software development was a much smaller field and your main focus was the "curiosity pond" where all the developers went to tinker.

Now software dev has expanded into an ocean. That pond is still there but the author missed the pond for the ocean.

Somewhat related, the partial-illusion of "where did all the old developers go, they seem way too rare, something is happening to them." While attrition and ageism do exist, there's a bigger factor.

The total workforce has expanded dramatically over time, so even if everybody in the started-40-years-ago cohort remained alive and employed, those (now much older) people would still be a tiny minority among the bigger and bigger cohorts that kept joining since then.

this doesn't make sense to me. early on in my career I was permitted, even asked, to make operating systems, languages, and distributed protocols. in todays world I'm lucky if I'm allowed to write a dashboard.

where is this ocean? that I have all these big pre-cooked components I can use to make saas spaghetti?