> a lot of devs just never found out they'd written buggy code and couldn't do anything even if they did.
This is undoubtedly true. No doubt there are countless quietly-malfunctioning embedded systems all around the world.
There also exist highly visible embedded systems such as on-air telephone systems used by high-profile talents in major radio markets around the country. In that environment malfunctions rarely go unnoticed. We'd hear about them literally the day of discovery. It's not that there were zero bugs back then, just nothing remotely like the jira-backlog-filling quantities of bugs that seem to be the norm today.
This is undoubtedly true. No doubt there are countless quietly-malfunctioning embedded systems all around the world.
There also exist highly visible embedded systems such as on-air telephone systems used by high-profile talents in major radio markets around the country. In that environment malfunctions rarely go unnoticed. We'd hear about them literally the day of discovery. It's not that there were zero bugs back then, just nothing remotely like the jira-backlog-filling quantities of bugs that seem to be the norm today.