I'd say "good old days" thinking is probably involved, but not the full explanation. Over the past few decades, software has gone from a fairly obscure profession to being seen as a great way (maybe the best way) to make a lot of money. In absolute numbers, there are probably at least as many engaged, curious engineers as before. There are almost certainly drastically more uninterested engineers who are there partially or fully because of the money, though.

edit: I hadn't scrolled down to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45303388 when I wrote this

Dunno. I’ve been at this since the late ‘80’s, and have run into precious few developers who were interested in software and programming for its own sake. For most of them it was just a job.