We've gotten to where we are using slow incremental improvements. Better tools, better compilers, vastly better linters, unit testing, CI, etc. Now and then we

We've gotten to where we are using slow incremental improvements. Better tools, better compilers, vastly better linters, unit testing, CI, etc. Now and then we manage to take some academic research and turn it into practible stuff e.g. the current generation of linters like FindBugs, Coverity, etc. And that is pretty much as it has always been, a slow drip of practical improvements fed by theoretical research.