I might argue that building a bridge is harder now taking the whole process into account (just the metallurgy is vastly more complex); but they don't fall down as often. Which they often did in early railroad days thanks to hidden cracks in the metal that were both frequent and undetectable back then. But ordering a bridge to be built might be easier, now.
Specifying routines completely disambiguously will always be hard, but I do think techniques will come along to provide the equivalent of railings and safety nets while you do this; such as AI to query you about what you really want to happen, and to draw your attention to edge cases and unusual combinations of circumstances that you need to make a clear decision about.
Programming is much much easier now than it was in the 80s! It's been years since I actually had to write any code myself - computers do it all for us now. Amazing things, these "compiler" programs.
That's a very interesting way of looking at it. I always kind of looked at my preferred language's grammar as "code", but now I feel like I'm calling TLS SSL when I do that.
I wonder what else to call it. "Source code" is obvious and what everyone uses, but now I want something else to use.
But overall it's so much easier these days. Even if you're spoiled for choice, you can get the tools and documentation for free. Back then it was either the BASIC interpreter that shipped with your computer (QBASIC for me) or the assembler (debug.com) or paying big bucks to buy a compiler. I was lucky that my dad could obtain a PASCAL and a C compiler through his work.
These days you might have too much choice but back then for a kid like me, the choice was what was available in the local library. So not much choice at all.
Sure there is, that's why mastering a concept is hard and takes thousands of repatitions or hours to become masterful.
Similarly not simply building the same old bridge, because who the hell wants bridge 1.0 I want warp-bridge 20.0 now, requires I have a mastery of basic Bridges and additional pioneering topics currently of interest of which few individuals are experts.
I think this is a really great point. Many people always dreamed of making games and now a days there are make-a-game kits that enable people to do just that with almost no programming knowledge necessary. But now the sort of games capable of being made by such things are relics of the past. By the time you create tools capable of enabling anybody to do 'average' tasks at one time, those tasks end up being relegated to triviality with the net effect that you're basically treading water.
And similarly the explosive growth of the products of these make-a-game kits renders the skill almost entirely worthless. What would have been a very viable publishable product 25 years ago, is now considered shovelware. I think the only way this would end is if we somehow reached a skill cap in development (you've officially made the best bridge that's at all possible!), but if such a thing may exist we're certainly nowhere even remotely close to getting there.
I disagree. It's pretty easy to, say, find a suitable log, stand it up by the edge of a stream, and topple it over. It's more about the strength required than the thinking; and if it's a struggle, we have JCBs, chainsaws, etc. to help.
For something a little more robust, hire an AVLB. For more permanence, buy something like a Bailey or Medium Girder bridge.
Of course, I'm being facetious; but my point is that "programming" covers a vast spectrum. We don't teach kids to write under the expectation that they'll be modern day Shakespeares (or build Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridges); we do it because writing is incredibly useful, even if it's as mundane as a shopping list on the back of one's hand (or a log over a stream).
If it is easier, it could be so because there's less inventing of new procedures and more following existing procedures (that is there's less "programming").
Specifying routines completely disambiguously will always be hard, but I do think techniques will come along to provide the equivalent of railings and safety nets while you do this; such as AI to query you about what you really want to happen, and to draw your attention to edge cases and unusual combinations of circumstances that you need to make a clear decision about.