Yes, but not in software. It's the hardware that's improved. So the sw can be sloppy and inefficient and most people won't notice.
Hardware has improved. Software has not. This is hard for some folks to accept. But it is a plain truth. Take away the added power of new hardware and what's left? You wouldn't want to know.
It is easier to do the same basic computing tasks as in 1984, with less effort, but it's not easier to exceed what you could do in 1984 because you have better software. It's because you have better hardware and can afford to be sloppy. 2-3 lines of perl/Python but how many lines are in the binary or the libraries? (e.g. what if you discovered there was gratuitous use of backtracking in _all_ perl's regex, even for the simplest matching; who would care?) There is no Moore's Law for software. To put it another way, most of the computing tasks being done today are the same ones (albeit on a different scale) and use the same methods (or even lazier ones) as in 1984. Hence the example of spellcheck. It's one of many tasks performed in 1984 and today and it will be performed in the future.
It's easy to mistake advances in hardware (more power) for advances in software (novel and more efficient approaches to problems).