I half agree with you. We are working at a much higher level of abstraction these days and the skills required have changed, but I don't think its any easier.

I half agree with you. We are working at a much higher level of abstraction these days and the skills required have changed, but I don't think its any easier. Part of my electronics degree (in the early 90's) involved programming a controller in hex through a 18 key keypad. Not quite card punching, but the screen display was just 2 characters. There was no editing - you had to start from scratch if you made a typo. It might sound a bit geek-macho but actually it wasn't difficult - just awkward. And you didn't need to worry about which text editor you used, whether the source control plugin was compatible - you just worked with what you had. In the 80's it was still possible to thoroughly understand the electronics, the assembly language AND write your own programs in C. Now, a web developer has to understand networks, databases, multi-tier architecture, ui design (not to mention the complex dev tools). It's still a big spread, but each of the fields is much deeper so we have to make do with a working knowledge in all these areas rather than "complete" knowledge. Today's graduates probably dabbled at high school with web page design, photoshop, powerpoint and spreadsheets at high school rather than circuit boards and assembly.