Comment by ben_w

5 hours ago

Could be, but I think the rot I see now predates the pandemic, possibly with reactive, possibly even before then: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/04/07-21.31.19.html

I blame it on "software eating the world" (in general) - at some point, about two decades ago, it started to become obvious to everyone that programming is the golden ticket to life - an easy desk job paying stupid amounts of money, with no barriers to entry. So very quickly the pool of students, and then employees, became dominated by people who joined in for the pay, not because of interest in technology itself.