Thank you for your reply, @TheCharlatan. I’ve learned a lot from you and @AntoineP about how you view the project as contributors and I’ll try to contemplate it carefully before I (as a non-contributor) write further about the main subject. However, I did want to immediately address one misunderstanding:
a symptom of the current group of developers being less well suited than previous [developers]
I’m sorry if my comments were interpreted as an attack on the current development team. In 11 years of writing Bitcoin documentation, I’ve had the pleasure of working with several generations of Bitcoin Core developers and I find the current cohort to be just as capable as previous teams. I also recognize that the job of improving a piece of software can only get harder over time as all of the easy wins are taken and what remains are either increasingly difficult challenges, less substantial payoffs, or (as is often the case) a squeeze at both ends as the challenges are more difficult than before for payoffs that are also less significant than before. With an established project, the natural direction is backwards: bitrot breaks what already exists and paying off technical debt saps forward momentum. The current team consistently overcoming all of these obstacles and making significant progress with each major release is a clear sign of both competence and diligence.
I’m impressed by the current development team, and I apologize to anyone who thought I felt otherwise.