Maybe it's not the quality of code that has slipped but the quality of the sources you're relying on? I tend to rely as much as possible on the standard librar

Maybe it's not the quality of code that has slipped but the quality of the sources you're relying on? I tend to rely as much as possible on the standard library of the languages I'm using (especially for Python and C++, which ships with a pretty good set of libraries already), and when I have to go beyond that, I try to vet libraries as carefully as possible. If a library deals with problems I know are going to be tricky, I try to take a peek beforehand at how it approaches dealing with those problems. If the approaches look obviously simplicistic/broken, I can save myself some time. But when I want to deal with truly hellish code problems, I let my 8-year-old sweet-talk me into installing just one more mod into his Minecraft installation...