The tools and operational bits are better and more available but the bar for what constitutes a viable product is much higher today. The cost and complexity of

The tools and operational bits are better and more available but the bar for what constitutes a viable product is much higher today. The cost and complexity of engineering done today would have been beyond the realm of practicality not that many years ago. Engineering complexity grows to consume the capabilities of our tools. Incremental improvements in operations and tools doesn't offset the large changes in engineering sophistication required to build software that isn't a mediocre re-hash of something that already exists. The definition of "state-of-the-art" in database engines, for example, has moved so much in the last 15 years that the level of technical know-how required has become a prohibitive barrier to new products.