10 years on – is software development getting any better?

The last 10 years have been exciting if you are a developer. Lots of new programming languages, lots of new IDEs, lots of new tools, lots of new approaches, lots of new apis but … as an industry are we developing software any better than we were 10 years back?I have been at Microsoft for 12 years and have been lucky enough to see the work of lots of different teams in different companies during those 12 years and I am struck by one rather scary thought. Things are not getting any better. Sure – there are great teams out there doing amazing stuff – but there were great teams doing amazing stuff 10 years back (and 20 and…). It is the “norm” that concerns me. I think the norm is no better than it was 10 years back, arguably worse (I will expand on this another time). What do you think?