I's happening. I'm not so old, I'd say maybe 10 years of programming, and in this time things changed a lot. Maybe I just progressed from making my own buttons in pascal to using libraries, but now I look at what a beginner programmer can do with the right tools and it's way beyond what I could. Part of it is the internet. I'm sure there was always a barcode library around, but now it's only a matter of googling "barcode library". Also widespread garbage collection, web interfaces, open source... The craft of programming is getting better by the year.