>This does not represent productivity in solving new problems, it just tells us it's worth reusing pieces for already solved problems.
That's neither here nor there.
First because most (if not all) of new problems can be solved by reusing existing parts (from languages and libs to widgets and cli tools).
Second, because we tend to re-work on the same problems over and over for the most part, anyway, so improvements on those are still greatly important (even more so than novel problems actually, which are about potential uncertain future markets, whereas solved problems are what drive existing global markets, so dozens of trillions of dollars).
That's neither here nor there.
First because most (if not all) of new problems can be solved by reusing existing parts (from languages and libs to widgets and cli tools).
Second, because we tend to re-work on the same problems over and over for the most part, anyway, so improvements on those are still greatly important (even more so than novel problems actually, which are about potential uncertain future markets, whereas solved problems are what drive existing global markets, so dozens of trillions of dollars).