I'm genuinely curious about this, and would like to see some data. When I started coding professionally the LAMP stack was the go-to, and your program would generally just do all the "work" in the context of a web request and then render an HTML page in response.
Now, the systems are much more complex for sure (queues and asynchronous processing, event buses, microservices, multiple databases for different purposes) but I'm not sure that (functionality provided to business) / (number of developers) has increased all that much.
Of course I could be dealing with a bias because as a novice programmer I worked on simpler programs and now I work on more complex / powerful programs.
> Of course I could be dealing with a bias because as a novice programmer I worked on simpler programs and now I work on more complex / powerful programs.
The software techniques you've listed are among the reasons why it's even possible to build more complex and powerful programs. Forward progress in software is always resisted by the contemporary programmers of the day who are deeply fond of their chosen anachronism and don't like it when they perceive the feeling that it is threatened by a newcomer. This is an ancient law of software that few seem to accept, but c is to assembly as python is to c and javascript is to python. Software developers tend to be thoughtful people, these tools exist for a reason.
This is so true its funny. I wrote c64 machine code and assembly still looks ridiculous. How is NOP easier to remember than AE? Every time I see base64 in JSON I'm reminded how much better life is if you make the effort to design a data format for a specific purpose. When I looked at all the convenient things in jquery some functions had just one line in them (I need help with this?), other things were so "good" they had me wonder why that isn't simply part of js. I'm aware how unreasonable it is in how you cant win either way.
I cant wait for the day some kind of GUI programming glued onto excel takes over the world so that we can all simultaneously raise our fist at the screen like grumpy old men.
Now, the systems are much more complex for sure (queues and asynchronous processing, event buses, microservices, multiple databases for different purposes) but I'm not sure that (functionality provided to business) / (number of developers) has increased all that much.
Of course I could be dealing with a bias because as a novice programmer I worked on simpler programs and now I work on more complex / powerful programs.