This was true as programming languages evolved too. It was so much easier to write scripting languages than C. You could crap our scripts like crazy - no cc refusing to give you a binary to get in your way.
Clearly..it still wasn't a silver bullet. Because output as a metric is a bad one. I thought it was only one managers valued..but apparently Anthropic has convinced devs to value it finally? i guess it def hits that dopamine receptor hard.