Actually, you're not missing anything. The thing is, hype cycles are just that, cycles. They come around with a mix of genuine amnesia, convenient amnesia, and junior enthusiasm, because cycles require a society (and/or industry) both able and willing to repeat exploration and decisions, whether they end up in wins or losses. Some people start to get get the pattern after a while but they are seen as cynics. After all, the show must go on, "what if this or the next cycle is the one that leads us to tech nirvana?"

Software engineering for any non-trivial problem means a baseline level of essential complexity that isn't going away, no matter the tool, not even if we someday "code" directly from our minds in some almost-free way via parallel programming thought diffusion. That's because (1) depth and breadth of choice; and (2) coordination/socials, mostly due but not uniquely related to (1) are the real bottlenecks.

Sure, accidental complexity can shrink, if you design in a way that's aligned with the tools, but even then, the gains are often overhyped. These kinds of "developer accelerators" (IDEs, low-code platforms, etc.) are always oversold in depth and scope, LLMs included.

The promise of the "10x engineer" is always there, but the reality is more mundane. For example, IDEs and LSPs are helpful, but not really transformative. Up to a point that people are being payed right now and don't use them at all, and they still deliver in a "economically justifiable" (by someone) way.

Today it's LLMs. Tomorrow it'll be LISP Machines v2.