When I learned COBOL in 1982, it was all about maintainable code. I used to love rewriting programs. It finally paid off when I rewrote the local long distance toll rating program for UsWest (now Quest). I reduced it from 10,500 lines to 5,600 lines and found four or five production errors that they knew existed but couldn’t find. They didn’t even know what program was causing them
I’ve not been a developer for about 15 years now (business analyst now), but I work with developers a lot. Apparently structured code has fallen out of favor these days. It’s all about getting it done via Agile, a chunk at a time.
I used to write applications (I refuse to say "apps" to make them sound hipper and cooler...) and you're exactly right. Agile is an excuse IMO for creating coding messes for someone else to clean up later.
The entire concept of "Agile" itself is a wreck (again, IMO) primarily because it gives business users an excuse to never come up with a firm set of requirements for what an a-p-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n needs to do. It's a never ending, sliding set of requirements that simply never gets met and the end product is always in a state of flux. Again because business users can't make up their mind what they want are complete idiots.