> I think much of the world of software has become incredibly myopic. > usually taking the easy way out is just deferring the costs to your future. Problem is that those costs accrue interest.

This sums up my thoughts perfectly lately, that is a great way to put it all.

Programmers have never been any good at measuring or estimating their own productivity, there is no reason to assume that has changed (one could argue theres ample reason to assume the opposite).

Part of the problem as well is that there is some unseen/unnamable "spaghettiness"/"sloppiness"/"whatever" factor, that scales very very poorly. At the beginning it can seem fine, especially when you have some constant speed multiplier like an LLM spitting out code - but the larger exponent of the function that results from this factor being "worse" will eventually outpace that constant multiplier. You will only see it once its too late, or will never see it all because of our myopia as you say.