OpenAI spent several years prior to ChatGPT getting AI to play Dota 2 well. They got some good results out of that, but it was a subset of the game: only a handful or two of characters. I’m not sure why they stopped; maybe that was when they pivoted to something more general?
Regardless, software dev I consider way more dimensional (eg nuanced) than Dota 2, even if a lot of patterns recur on a smaller scale in the code itself. If they weren’t able to crack Dota 2, why should I believe that software eng is just around the corner?
we don't think it's just around the corner
What experienced software engineers have is a sense of taste - this looks like good code and/or design, that doesn't. But they don't have data; they have, at best, a couple of anecdotes. It's more a sense of "that was harder to work with than it should have been; that approach seems to have drawbacks". But you only get a few examples of that in a career.
And there are very few outfits compiling usable data that could shape the approaches that software engineers use.
So I don't think how humans got there was primarily data.
how much real-world data do you think went into the evolution of the human brain and all its learning algorithms?
having 40 years of experience building software gives you no more insight into that than having 40 years of experience using language gives you insight into where your language skills come from