>The vast majority of running code is produced by people whose understanding of computer systems and programming goes as deep as how much documentation they need to ctrl+f through to get some specific tasks done.
I doubt this very much. Surely the vast majority of running code is some chunk of Chrome, Android, or the JVM ("billions of devices run Java...") or something. All those things were produced by software engineers with more than surface-level understanding.
For every well-engineered application used by millions of users, you've got thousands of poorly-engineered, bespoke applications in use by one or two users (often internal corporate tools or expensive middleware with minimal customization besides changing the corporate branding).
Still, I wouldn't consider "Chrome" as good software.
Let's be honest: web browsers are really bad. Overly complicated machines made to print images and text on the screen. The web got sideways long ago, first because it was cool to add crap in websites, then because it made profit and allowed monopolies to make more profit by moving everything to damn webapps. And finally it allows companies to screw users by renting software on the damn cloud.
And they profit by making it as accessible as possible, such that everyone and their dog can produce a crappy webapp that will show their ads or track their users.
Webtech is part of what makes software really bad, even if it was created by good engineers. Because people don't want quality: they want cheap new crap.
Maybe by instances of the same codebase, yeah absolutely.
But there is certainly more codebases out there running some python or js written by designers, data analysts etc then those produced and curated by software engineers.
I doubt this very much. Surely the vast majority of running code is some chunk of Chrome, Android, or the JVM ("billions of devices run Java...") or something. All those things were produced by software engineers with more than surface-level understanding.