[miki123211]

At some point, you just stop measuring the thing until the thing becomes a problem again. That lets you work a lot faster and make far more software for far less money.

It's the "fast fashion" of software. In the middle ages, a shirt used to cost about what a car does now, and was just as precious. Now, most people can just throw away clothes they no longer like.

[OkayPhysicist]

Shirts used to be expensive, but "nice clothes" expensive in today's money, not "1st/2nd most expensive thing most people own" type expensive. $200-$1000 in today's money, scaling to wages.