Also if you go back and read the software engineering conferences proceedings from 1968 and 1969, David Parnas' classic 1970s papers, and other instances of this foundational material, you realise that except that we have faster computers, higher-level languages, and version control, software engineering really hasn't changed since then.

We're still struggling with team organisation, verifying features with users before building them, choosing proper abstractions, testing for reliability and understanding, resource management, documentation, modeling the domain clearly, prototyping the right way, and so on.

All the actually difficult things today are just the same as they were 40--50 years ago.

While on the surface things look like they move quickly, what makes one a good software engineer is the same as it's always been.

Good software engineering is not about today's favourite technology. It's about building things that work and which people actually need. That is a hard-earned skill and you don't get it by chasing shiny things.