I don't think it is more difficult than it use to be. There's more layers in some cases, but most of the time those are abstraction layers that making things ea

I don't think it is more difficult than it use to be. There's more layers in some cases, but most of the time those are abstraction layers that making things easier (or at least attempt to). I think the difference is maybe one of perception. We can do more so the baseline expectations of users/customers are higher. I also think that there has been a higher growth of people specializing in one area rather than every programmer sort of being a full stack generalist by default. So for a front end specialist, databases and server side may seem like a black box and more complicated than ever. Or someone specializing in kernel programming might think front end is more complicated than ever. Generally you can still do things the way they were done in the past if you want to. New tools might make things easier and learning them might seem complex, but you don't have to.