Teams are not getting smaller. The original Macintosh team was not much larger than the teams he mentions and probably had much more technological impact.
The web has been around for a quarter century now and still rather trivial websites that mostly could be replaced by tools sell for some $50k. Because even those basic tools we had 25 years to build are not there yet.
Software engineering is actually becoming proper engineering, at least in Europe where much of it is focused more on industry. Crashes are mostly unacceptable now. Embedded software is sometimes formally proved.
Finally, as everyone who actually develops software knows, we need to cut many needed features to ship in time. Think how incredibly long it still takes to implement what you can imagine: It takes many months. This is a good indication of how far we are actually from combining things in a lego-like fashion, from making dreams come true quickly because it is so easy.
The web has been around for a quarter century now and still rather trivial websites that mostly could be replaced by tools sell for some $50k. Because even those basic tools we had 25 years to build are not there yet.
Software engineering is actually becoming proper engineering, at least in Europe where much of it is focused more on industry. Crashes are mostly unacceptable now. Embedded software is sometimes formally proved.
Finally, as everyone who actually develops software knows, we need to cut many needed features to ship in time. Think how incredibly long it still takes to implement what you can imagine: It takes many months. This is a good indication of how far we are actually from combining things in a lego-like fashion, from making dreams come true quickly because it is so easy.