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by mimixco 1901 days ago
I think the key part is "in a few hours." No one, even professional devs, can do this "in a few hours" today.
2 comments

I mean, I can, if you spot me Node/Express or even TS/React as the stack to use. Those are at the core of my professional discipline, and I know what's going on well enough with them that standing up a new project, complete with compilers, linters, style formatters, style linters, and so on, doesn't take me much.

But that's building on close to twenty years of working in the field, and a bit over three decades since I first put my hands on an Apple IIe's keyboard and wrote

    10 PRINT "HELLO"
    20 GOTO 10
Which is the key part, really - I wasn't far past 10 PRINT "HELLO" when I happened upon Hypercard, and I was still able to use it effectively with no more background than that. I don't know that there's anything comparable today.
I think you might enjoy checking out BlockStudio (disclaimer, I created it):

https://www.blockstud.io

Depending on the toolchain, they absolutely can. Tech is more complex but there are still pathways to extreme productivity.