All of the generalizations you gave hold true in some situations, and always have. Software has always suffered from poor quality, complexity, and the short-term demands of companies seeking profits.

I keep programming because it pays well and lets me work when I want, and live wherever I want. I lost my idealism about software development decades ago. It can feel frustrating but it beats a lot of other jobs.

Everything you say is true... but;

Indeed, I keep quoting a remark by Ian Sommerville (a pioneer of software engineering), which I believe is authentic - he said that he thought he had "wasted his time" on that whole life project.

It's similar to Sir Tim Berners-Lee 's remark that the Web was "a mistake" (not the comment about slashes and colons - a much darker comment about the failure of humanity to use tools, and one that seems to have been airbrushed off the net (or I am a very bad researcher), perhaps by Sir Tim himself. I'd much appreciate it if anyone can find a source of that still around).

Anyway, the answer is idealism and opportunity.

It is precisely because people are enslaved by tech.

It is exactly because we have a fragile infrastructure.

It is because business exploits and enshitifies everything it touches.

That creates the conditions, the opportunity to free people, build a strong and secure digital world, to replace shallow money grubbing apathy with principled visions, to reduce complexity, to defeat malice and weak mindedness.

There are many better paid and easier jobs to do. But software is one of the fundamental battlegrounds of humanity now. Who would not take up arms and revel in their time? Much else depends on it; the environment, education, health, peace and prosperity.

I hope there are some young and optimistic people reading this, but I suspect the whole thread will be flagged and nuked by the cynical anti-humanists milling around these these parts.