"How is it possible that software gets worse, not better, over time, despite billions of dollars of R&D and rapid progress in tooling and AI? What evil force, more powerful than Innovation and Progress, is at work here?"

I once asked someone this question and he replied with a single word. "Greed", he said.

I wanted the opinion of someone who was not biased, i.e., who did not believe, AKAIK, that, as stated by the author of this blog post, "software is getting worse".

This person was longtime shareholder in one of the companies that engages in what's being described here and their success has been his success.

If anything, I thought, he should be biased in favour of "modern" software not against it.