[weinzierl]

"The pyramid is also an artifact of the era in which it was created. Computers were slower, testing and debugging tools were rudimentary, and developer infrastructure was bloated, cumbersome, and inefficient."

In addition to that, I think a major point is that the testing pyramid was conceived in a world where desktop GUI applications ruled. Testing a desktop GUI was incredibly expensive and automation extremely fragile. That is in my opinion where the pointy tip of the pyramid came from in the first place.

"But the majority of tests are of the entire service, via its API [..]"

I think this is where you get the best bang for your buck because your goal to keep your tests robust is well aligned with the goal to keep the API stable. This is not the case above and below, where the goal of robust tests is always at odds with change, quick adaption and rapid iteration.

[dtech]

these pointy shape still holds, because we often have multiple services now and testing across services is difficult and expensive.