Sure they are. They are the "hard part" of what every 9-5 LOB dev has to do, and even in the more CS heavy fields from my experience the algorithms and the fanc

Sure they are. They are the "hard part" of what every 9-5 LOB dev has to do, and even in the more CS heavy fields from my experience the algorithms and the fancy CS is 20% of the work and the rest is implementing mundane details, bug fixing, testing, cooperating with team members, etc. And that's the stuff that improved since the 90s. Delivering reliable software is hard - but we've gotten a lot better at it in the last 20 years, if you don't believe me boot up some old windows 95/98 image install some random software and see for yourself.