Foundational software requires that, but the foundation is pretty much completely built at this point. The workforce required to keep it running is but a tiny fraction of what was required to build it. The past has shown that innovation in hardware can push for the foundations to be rebuilt, but we've also already got computers basically everywhere now. There may not be some new innovation that requires the foundations to be completely rewritten again.

The little one-off programs that we thought would keep developers busy forevermore don't require engineers. They often don't even require code. LLMs can natively do a lot of things that historically would have required software.