You are focusing on the generational trends, I was focusing on the individual.
Tell a kid learning to program today "you should program in assembly because it's efficient, like I did back in my days".
Kid looks around and sees it would take him 3 days to implement a hello world in assembly, but only 3 seconds to do it in Python. He has a 16 core computer with 64 GB of RAM. Both hello worlds run instantly. So how does that advice make sense? Kid calls you a crazy old man out of touch with the times. Kid goes on running locally a 50 GB LLM to make it do a hello world and feels very excited about the future of programming.
I'm not sure I would agree that the point I'm making cleanly transposes onto the details that you've selected.
For one, I think the accepted premise in this conversation up till now was that there is a real issue with software bloat. And you've switched that detail out for a different one where we assume no discernible bloat or difference in performance as time passes.
I also don't think that I understand what's going on in the pivot from generational examples to individual ones. I feel like at least the comment I replied to was pretty clearly about generational trends. But on another level I think that the upshot is the same regardless of whether your surveying that disagreement at a general level versus its equivalent manifestation at an individual level.
I think the upshot would be the same in each case as long as you keep all the details the same, and I think somewhere in the transposition from the general to the individual and agreed assumption about bloat and underperformance of software, as well as some implications about what that means about prevailing assumptions and practices surrounding software development, got lost in the translation from one to the other.
Tell a kid learning to program today "you should program in assembly because it's efficient, like I did back in my days".
Kid looks around and sees it would take him 3 days to implement a hello world in assembly, but only 3 seconds to do it in Python. He has a 16 core computer with 64 GB of RAM. Both hello worlds run instantly. So how does that advice make sense? Kid calls you a crazy old man out of touch with the times. Kid goes on running locally a 50 GB LLM to make it do a hello world and feels very excited about the future of programming.