> we glorify bootcamps that promise anyone can become a developer in weeks. We worship open source, working nights and weekends “to help the community,”
We do? I was under the impression that most devs were disappointed in the result of bootcamps. And there are bootcamps that are simply scams. We do like open source, but the number of people working nights and weekends on it is quite small.
You are just seeing the natural progression of knowledge. Standing on the shoulders of giants, etc. Back in the 90s, you could have a 7 figure ARR startup just by doing one basic CRUD app and putting it online. Now, people can do that as a learning exercise within a few days of starting learning how to code, and that was even before AI. The tools are better, libraries exist for most common needs, coding and DevOps practices have evolved, access to documentation and tutorials is incredible, and we are working at higher and higher levels of abstraction.
It is not because we are glorifying mediocrity. On the contrary, we have spent decades striving quite hard to increase everyone's skills and communicate better ways of doing things. And we succeeded. If you can find any, go look at code and practices from the early 2000s and you will see just how much the general quality of work has increased.
As a result of all the support from each other, more people can do the work now. Yes, it decreases salaries, but we've been living in an insane compensation bubble for a long time.