Why does software still take years to ship when months should be enough?

Across startups and large enterprises alike, we keep solving the same problems: security, scalability, networking, observability, deployment.

Over the years we added tools, layers, frameworks, and now AI. Yet idea-to-production still takes years in environments where months should be achievable.

This did not happen by accident, but it did become normalized. I am trying to understand how this happened and what would actually reverse it.