I'm a software engineer. I've seen how poorly software is written, how badly it's tested, and how many stupid mistakes developers make. I've been the one making staggeringly stupid mistakes!
And yet... the vast majority of the software we use just kinda works. And if it's broken, it doesn't tend to stay that way for long.
It's easy to see problems as a developer, but our software could be so much worse.
The fact that software is so pervasive definitely speaks for itself, but we still have a very long way to go.
But I think it is a different quality of the software. Contrary to other people in these comments, I think we make software that actually does work in the vast majority of cases. "Working" isn't really the same as high performance, feature rich, or intuitive software, though.
This is one of the worst things apps and websites have started to do. I can hardly open an app without encountering this. Note to devs and PMs who think these are a good idea: I don’t read them, I dismiss them immediately, and every time you do this I like your app a little bit less. Stop it.
My internet was down the other day so for something to do (I didn't think it would actually work, and it didn't) I logged into Comcast's site on my phone to see if there was an outage or something I could troubleshoot from there. I had to click through maybe half a dozen notifications of things I don't care about in the slightest just to get to the "home" page of my account.
And that's just the first two things I thought of. That sort of miserable design where they try to get me to look at things I don't care about and will never care about just because it might make them money is so pervasive, it's everywhere.
People seldom realise how much engineering is necessary to make the modern world tick and that goes for software too.