Expectations have also changed in various ways since "the simple days" when devs were the product managers, the implementors and testers all in one. Some things are better now, some things are worse.
I used to be able to churn out a form, naively, in two hours because I could just implement the elements, inline style them, give them a name and then go implement the backend form handler. Now there's a checklist of requirements: does it implement our design system, does it have test id attributes, is it responsive, does it work with password managers and auto populating form fillers, does it support internationalization, does it support multiple languages correctly, does it provide client side data validation, does the server return errors correctly and how should they be displayed, does it have rendering tests, does it have end to end tests, and so on and on and on.
Most of this isn't needed for a personal project or proof of concept but for a reliable product that millions of people use globally, a lot of it is table stakes or legal liability. You can certainly do it server side too, but the two hour effort window is still gone.
I used to be able to churn out a form, naively, in two hours because I could just implement the elements, inline style them, give them a name and then go implement the backend form handler. Now there's a checklist of requirements: does it implement our design system, does it have test id attributes, is it responsive, does it work with password managers and auto populating form fillers, does it support internationalization, does it support multiple languages correctly, does it provide client side data validation, does the server return errors correctly and how should they be displayed, does it have rendering tests, does it have end to end tests, and so on and on and on.
Most of this isn't needed for a personal project or proof of concept but for a reliable product that millions of people use globally, a lot of it is table stakes or legal liability. You can certainly do it server side too, but the two hour effort window is still gone.