> Is this indicative of a cultural shift in the industry? Yes I think the industry is changing. In my anecdotal experience, the quality of programmers has tak

> Is this indicative of a cultural shift in the industry? Yes I think the industry is changing. In my anecdotal experience, the quality of programmers has taken a nose dive. I think part of the reason is that it's been a lucrative industry for long enough that parents have had time to coach their children into the industry. In the early-mid 2000s (when I cut my teeth) and especially in the 80s/90s (from what I hear) you came across more "hacker" types that were doing this work for the love of doing it. Yea you still had the "Initech" type companies that would outsource/etc but cutting edge programming work was a lot easier to find. These days I'm seeing more and more people that treat programming as a "job", not a "passion". Obviously I think this is a good thing for people, in general. But I also think that, while the potential for software is at its highest, the actual relative quality of software is at its absolute lowest. This is due in large part to the bad quality of software engineering these days. Again, very anecdotal.