Are programmers really getting better ?

as someone who programs as a hobby and hopefully intends to make a career out of it, yes, i do believe programmers are getting better, in general. As far as game development goes it’s definitely getting easier to make games, with free and powerful engines like unreal and unity among others. and as a result usually we get better games in nearly every way.

can’t speak on self driving cars tho.

Cool yes I agree it's much easier now than programming in machine language lol.

I think that's supposed to be the very nature of programming.

Yes like learning from others instead of reinventing new ways. Still the self driving cars is concerning, it's one thing for a home computer to glitch compared to a vehicle that could kill the passengers or others.

Yeah, some items are not necessarily practical. Maybe we can evolve in programming beyond frequent or inevitable glitches. Normal cars may not have seemed very safe at first. Let's all hope for the best.

True I just had expected them to do more testing first before unleashing them on the roads.

No, no, no, that would make too much sense.