I worked for almost 15 years in embedded and have 25YOE, and no, software has not always sucked as much as it does now. I agree with your last point a lot, tho

I worked for almost 15 years in embedded and have 25YOE, and no, software has not always sucked as much as it does now. I agree with your last point a lot, though I would modify it slightly: it's much easier to write mountains of code now than it as, and it's now common and much easier to import external dependencies (especially at system level) than ever, and those dependencies have tens of millions of lines of mediocre code all by themselves.