I've been a professional programmer for over 30 years; I'm pretty sure I don't fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of programming. Thanks for assuming that I'm stupid or ignorant, though. (For the record, I agree with your definition of the purpose of programming.)

You don't have to prove to me that monoliths are bad. I get it. (You don't have to prove to me that spaghetti is bad, either.) But you seem to have missed my point.

Monoliths don't just happen. They didn't just wind up in your server room because the roof leaked during rainy season. They didn't get delivered by FedEx by mistake, and your people went ahead and signed for them. No, the monoliths are there because people wrote them.

Why did people write them? 1. Because they didn't know better, and just fell into it. 2. Because they thought that was the best way to architect something. 3. Because they didn't take the time and effort to make something more modular.

People cause the monoliths. To fix monoliths, you have to fix the people problem, or you're going to continue to get monoliths.