[nickm12]

I only have my narrow view of the industry (a handful of teams across 4 different companies) but I disagree with the premise. It seems to me that software quality is on average better than when I started out in the industry in the mid-2000s (and at school before that). In that time, I've seen version control, code reviews, automated testing, and reproducible builds all go from novel tools we were dipping our toes in to industry standard practices.

That said, I think it's only slightly better, and not as good as it should be given our tools and (collective) experience. I chalk this up to the reasons other people have given—mainly the business of software doesn't favor clean code and the majority of code is written by new developers who are still developing their skills.