People misinterpret this and think they can incrementally build a skyscraper out of a shed.
That's exactly why software is so bad. No one ever knows their shed would ultimately have to become a skyscraper, and management doesn't allocate any budget to lay stronger foundations when expectations change; you make do with what you have.
See also: "there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution"
You can't physically but the logic is the same: you need beams, foundations, walls and roofs, with strenghts adjusted for scale. Software mindset :-)
In this sense, web applications haven't changed so much in the last twenty years: client, server, database...
It’s actually the opposite - you actually can. The feel I'm getting reading anti-AI sentiment is people are expect one shot results out of limited context.
That's what happened though? First humans built sheds, then we built 2-story buildings, then taller and taller, until we built skyscrapers. Obviously it wasn't a single structure, but we did have to evolve our thinking on how to build things, we didn't just start building a skyscraper before we built a shed.