I did not mean to imply that steel quality has in any way continued to suffer. He was talking about the process of the early 20st century in comparison to the late 19th when steelmaking was handled more end-to-end from maker to user.
I am talking about enshittification of digital applications and services compared to the earlier years of the information age.
The transitory enshittified steel subsided once scientific formalization of their requirements emerged. I wonder if the transition period of vibe-coded slop will eventually be supplanted with formal-verification that supersede even the quality of cottage codesmanship, or would it forever remain in snakeoil-ridden limbo due to unspecifiability of software taste unlike that of a material’s mechanical performance?