In the early 1980's, truly object-orientated programming languages became available for general use. With these, it is duck soup to code up and test very useful modules that you can just plug in to provide safety actions.
An example - a controlled String object. Manages its own memory, refuses to write beyond buffer size you tell it on creation. Can easily add safe versions of any operations you want to apply to it. Extensible later without busting any earlier code whatsoever. Part of the example framework for C++ and doubtless other languages like Java that I don't remember.
What more could you want, right? But most programmers never did learn to think this way. To be fair, the team developing C++ became far more concerned about esoteric details and perfections few could understand, so that the community bothered with little of it.
Another factor may have been the difficult modules many had to deal with outside their own code: multimedia players that hardly worked; web browsers ditto, and so many thread-based activities that nearly no-one understood or had not been designed accurately in the first place, so that they failed in real use in extravagant ways.
So much wheel-spinning because coders at most levels didn't do quality or depth knowledge, or forethought either.
I know they often wished to understand better, but experience says not so many of them did.
Now we reap the consequences, when there is a profit, and it may be also a politics, for some in taking advantage.
Not fun. But on the other hand, maybe we are finally learning something about making software adapt. Another subject....
Regards
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